First of all, this post is not intended to offend anyone, just to comment on my personal experience.
During the time I’ve been using Linux I’ve mostly used KDE Plasma as DE, although when I started, I started with good old Ubuntu and Gnome and never had any problems using it.
But recently I tried Zorin OS (which I know uses an old version of Gnome, and in fact it was the second distro I used in my life) and other Gnome based distros and holy cow, I felt like I wanted to tear my skin off not even being able to resize windows to 1/4 when touching a corner of my screen.
And then, although this in general should be an easy thing to do and KDE Plasma does it indiscriminately, in Gnome there is no way to configure programs to open by default at startup, and I know, this is a very simple thing, but some of the programs that I installed I wanted them to start in the system tray (which in addition, Zorin’s Gnome does not have) and none obeyed the command “Start the program minimized”, they always started with the maximized window, and in fact adding commands to start minimized did not change anything.
Then, Files (Zorin’s default file manager) does not show in the sidebar the devices that are connected via SATA (having more than one hard disk) and having to navigate through different menus is a headache, for something that should be easy.
Then, as said, there is no tray, no clipboard, no decent sound selection tool and better not to mention the screenshot tool (the current Gnome one is very good) and a long etc that is solved by installing third party extensions that simply give me the feeling that the system becomes heavier, for something that should be by default.
Not to mention other extraneous and easy to fix problems, like Gnome not detecting my Bluetooth antenna (it did, but when I tried to activate it, it said my system was in airplane mode when it is a desktop).
I’ve tried different DE’s and WM but Plasma got my heart, besides, the KDE Gear programs are absolutely great (like Audiotube or Plasmatube).
I have nothing against Gnome or ZorinOS and I can use them without any problem, but I find it incredible that one of the most recommended distros for newbies lacks important features like a system tray, I hope ZorinOS will upgrade to a more modern version of Gnome and fix those bugs soon.
I see it as folks who don’t use KDE have used whatever alternative for a good while and are comfortable with it. Like you highlighted, alterations can be made with tweaks and other programs, but I agree with you, it’s very nice not having to set up these additional features. Also, KDE coming with zero telemetry by default is another aspect which shows they’re better compared to other options. While most other environments allow for telemetry to be disabled, this too takes additional time. All in all, anyone who doesn’t use KDE simply enjoy whatever set up they run and don’t see the benefits of switching over. KDE is where it’s at, I too struggle to understand why someone would want anything else, but to each their own.
Well, I used Gnome for 3 years and always used a lot of Extensions either for better desktop usage or fun. But now on KDE for 1 year, damn. Idk. I kinda was stuck to Gnome because I wanted to have smooth animations and especially this smooth Overlay feature on Super button press is something I loved too much to not have it. Now with AMD on KDE its also possible to have such a smooth overlay feature but with less aestethics like Gnome.
But the tons of features I have now on KDE are also making me wonder how people can use Gnome or Windows 10/11
Gnome’s development is also slow imo. I don’t follow the progress but it has to catch KDE feature wise.
Just after I made the jump from GNOME to KDE late last year it felt like KDE development was lagging because that’s when GNOME decided to issue a flurry of feature updates what seemed like all at once and it made me question my choice to switch DEs. But then when that cooled off I saw that at “normal” times they really do update at about the same pace and there have been relatively big KDE updates since. Either way it’s not a competition, and what rivalry is there is more of a friendly one.
Lol. Gnome is taking huge leaps on VRR and fractional scaling. Highly hyped KDE6 doesn’t work “good enough” on Wayland to get released. Backend > UI
Try Manjaro Sway in live mode just to realize how lightweight a fully functional fully configured Wayland WM could be. The more xorg written stuff you have on UI, the harder the transition will be.
KDE, Gnome/Pop_OS! and XFCE/Cinnamon/LxQt etc. are all targeted for different audience. Most Gnome likers likes the simplicity and prefer less titles in the settings menu.
Different use cases.
You want a usually minimal experience? GNOME
You want features and a nice look? Plasma
You want personalization with a big focus on speed and not too many extras? XFCE
You want even more focus on speed? LXDE
You want to tinker and have the bare minimum to then work your way up? i3 or AwesomeWM
usually they either don’t know what they’re missing, or don’t care imo
I’d make it my daily driver in a flash but the god awful touchpad driver keeps me dual booting. Windows is simply years ahead when it comes to laptop usability
KDE Plasma is pretty much my daily driver and I work with it all the time. Having looked at both Gnome and Plasma, it baffling to me why people still seems to think that Gnome is any better than Plasma especially when majority of the people jumping to Linux are likely more familiar with Windows and Plasma offers that familiarity out of the box.
Plasma was buggy back in the day, but it have become a lot more stable and reliable now that I use it professionally on Arch Linux. One of those cool feature of Plasma is accessibility, during a meeting, I have to use text to speech to talk out loud, because I can’t find an interpreter, so I used Natural Reader and do some complex audio setup to pipe Natural Reader audio to Mic. I needed the hotkey set up for tildes so I can easily type what I want to say and have it speak out from my entered text without having to move the mouse by pressing tilde key.
With extensions GNOME can become very Windows-like as well. This is how Nobara is set up by default, for example.
Sometimes you just have to put in a bit more effort to het tjings the way you want, but KDE isexceptionally easy to configure, that’s right. To each their own I suppose.
