Plasma is exactly what I don't want in a DE. It’s extremely configurable, but also overwhelming, and I don’t think that’s something the average user would feel comfortable navigating.
I ended up choosing GNOME. It feels visually cohesive, and the design is much more opinionated — they’ve clearly made decisions about what should and shouldn’t be part of the core desktop experience.
Right now the systray has a very ugly delay when opening applets like WiFi or sound. Up to 1.5 seconds (!). This doesn't happen with the applets bare in the menu bar, so there must be some sort of negative interaction there between the systray code and applet code.
This is on a bog standard KDE install too.
I don't like Gnome's high and mighty attitude either, especially because it chases people away from making bug reports or contributing. And when 90%+ of your users uses a particular extension (Dash to Dock), maybe make that behaviour integrated and the default.
At this point my hope is squarely aimed at PopOS' COSMIC environment.
It's fine giving lot of customization but the default got to be good, and at the opposite (gnome) it's fine to give no customization option as long as it's well thought out and makes sense.
Sadly, it's neither the case.
The best I could find was cinnamon desktop, they're not too bad.
But I do think some of the systray things are overly complicated. E.g. why does the volume widget list all audio outputs and inputs by default?
On the other hand some things are really great. E.g. which other DE lets you adjust the screen brightness (the real one via DDC/CI) from the systray, or start video screen capture by pressing print screen?
KDE is definitely better than gnome at this point.
I don't mind changing things on KDE, but the defaults are useless to me. Too many annoying things, all those time-wasting gimmicks, on-hover uselessness. It is clearly written for another target audience, e. g. Average Joe coming from Windows. While that is fine perhaps for those users, to me the default is useless. And I think many others feel in a similar way. To me the defaults in GNOME are even worse though, so it is a lose-lose scenario. But things can be configured, so that problem can be solved for most settings or behaviour; I am just not convinced that sticking to the defaults works that well.
I have found KDE excellent and intuitive from the get go without much customization. To me GNOME is very primitive in comparison and ugly too.
KDE is the DE that made shed the bias again linux UIs as having that crummy look that set them apart from commercial desktops.
Sure it has issues (which mostly crop up when you are doing deep customization) but for the basics I don't even think any other Linux DE come close.
Look at it and tell me this is normal. I love Plasma but oh man do they need to hire a real designer. Someone with balls to unfuck the interface and move all advanced settings out of GUI into a well documented config file.
Konsole on left, ghostty (which is gtk) on right. The latter has at least 3 additional lines visible outputting the same command. The giant copy paste buttons, tab bar which wastes a ton of space, are typical of kde apps. The klutter isn’t just visually annoying it makes the apps less useful.
No alignment issues, menus sorted by professional designers, easier to learn UX like ribbon menus and a lot more.
Feel like the design issues stem from it being shaped by existing power users. Familiarity tend to downplay design issues so stability took priority, even though the UX never should've been stabilised in the first place.
Plus AFAIK it's the most multi threaded so it's the hardest to freeze.
I don't want to be negative for the sake of it but I constantly read these really positive comments about Linux on the desktop (in general or in specifics) and it gave me a false impression of what to expect. Not the first time I've fallen for this either over the years.
I think it all really depends on the wants and workflows of the user
I haven't compared those two with XFCE recently, but they all seem fine these days.
It’s got 4GB RAM and a modest Intel i3.
KDE runs flawlessly. While modern web browsers struggle with more than a few tabs open.
Meanwhile, Gnome just works exactly like you'd expect it to. I said it before already, but Gnome is for people moving from macOS and KDE is for ex-Windows veterans. And, for the record, I don't want to praise Gnome's overly-minimalistic approach, either, which too gets annoying when you have to find an extension for every stupid extra setting beyond the defaults. But, all in all, I much prefer it over KDE and wouldn't switch back. Not to mention the aesthetics, because there's no comparison if one shares the Apple/Braun ideals on design.
A plot twist here is that I am also a KDE app developer...
For comparison, MacOS doesn't have a printscreen key, it's command-shift-3 or command-shift-4. Much more confusing to newcomers in my experience.
Other than that I don't have too many complaints.