I needed a desktop environment with a UI that wasn't intended to be hidden away. Or a desktop that wasn't challenging the way that I intend to work with the computer.

KDE may be boring and it may not challenge any paradigms. But it works well and stays out of the way.

Over the years, I don't think there's many DE's or WM's that I haven't tried to live with on a daily driver, such as KDE, Gnome, Cinnamon, Qtile, XMonad, I3, AwesomeWM, etc etc. What I found over the years was how much I appreciated a clean, simplistic UI for an operating system.

After spending multiple years on 'window manager only' setups (got fed up with updating configs on major updates, and got fed up with the amount of config I had to do), I returned back to KDE mainly for the intense amount of OOTB customisation. However, what I realised after a while was that I was just setting up KDE to look and behave like Gnome.

So 2 years after last using KDE, I'm now just using Gnome all the time. I like the workflow, on laptop personally I think the gesture navigation is better than any other DE, and I love the simplistic design. Plus extensions get me what isn't included OOTB.

Downside to Gnome is when major updates occur and extensions break as a result, other than that I can't think of much bad about Gnome

Gnome. Sublime flow, very polished. Simply works.

KDE can be OK but it is very overloaded on customization, not nearly as polished, and honestly I dislike that style it upholds. IMHO.

Gnome employs Jeremy Bicha as a person convicted of sexual battery of a minor and as far as we know never notified other employees especially at conventions or other employee gatherings.

I'll stick with KDE

The opinions of Gnome are not a match for mine.

KDE let's me get really specific on the things I want to, and its well supported.

Just that simple for me!

I've been running KDE now, almost exclusively, for almost 15 years. KDE works (by default) in a way similar to the way Windows XP worked in the late 90's - late 2000's. It felt familiar enough that I didn't have to try and figure out most things that I wanted to do. The few things that didn't work the way I wanted ( or felt they should) were easy enough to change. XFCE was similar (had a Windows 95-98 feel) but was not as configurable.

Gnome 2, I rather liked as it had a feel similar to Mac OS 8 from way back when I was in school, however I just never got along with Gnome 3. Everything felt... off. I can use it, Just don't care for it. Same for most other DEs.

KDE looks modern, has features I didnt even know I wanted. Whatever I can think of wanting it's either already there or I make a post on the fourm and its there in a month.

When I had an issue with an update removing something that I liked. I made a post and KDE devs added a toggle so I could keep the functionality I had before. Even though it was a minor thing they could have told me not to worry.

I think there's not too many technical reasons to choose one or the other lol, just look up a couple of videos on Youtube and that might be enough for you to decide for yourself

or use distrosea.com/

EDIT: damn I guess this comment was controversial for some reason lol

I like KDE because it is super customisable out of the box, and I personally prefer the more contrasty, colourful look of KDE over the more minimal and padded GNOME.

However, if you like GNOME, that's perfectly fine! With GNOME Extensions, you can also customise a lot, far more than Windows or MacOS lets you without sketchy third-party tools. And of course, Cinnamon, XFCE, Cosmic, etc. are all great too.

First, I haven't used gnome in probably 15 years, so I can't give a fair comparison, but I've grown with kde over the last 3.

My opinion is that it's always worked for me, and is decently customizable. I couldn't use Wayland for the first 4+ months due to conflicts with my Nvidia card, but kde 6 (I think 6) fixed all of my issues.

On new Linux serious, I don't install the full kde suite, because I have other apps I prefer like alacrity instead on konsole. This keeps it lighter but with all of the other DE controls.

Also, I've not heard a bad thing of the kde dev team, but I have about gnome. I can't cite specifics, but I know I've read some bad stuff.

You can always install both DEs and try both out and determine which is best for you.

A couple of years ago, I used both of them briefly and GNOME simply provided the more polished experience back then.

In time, I came to dislike the look/design of KDE apps.

So when the time came I wanted to ditch GNOME because I was sick of its extensions ecosystem, I didn't even consider KDE Plasma. Instead, I tried out Sway and eventually settled on COSMIC.

Gnome lost a lot of functions when streamlining, just compare Dolphin to Nautilus, and instead of fighting their vision I went for a DE that works the way I want.
I love information density and easily get hooked on spreadsheet games, I feel as if that is the exact opposite of the Gnome vision.

edit: I prefer Gnome for touch only devices like Microsoft Surface Pro 7 without physical kbm.

GNOME expects the user to adapt to the workflow its developers have in mind. The desktop environment should adapt to me, not the other way around.

Plus, I love customization and themes. But GTK app developers create angry websites where they try to shame me for it.

When I got back to Linux some years back, I tried using GNOME because I had had good experiences with GNOME 2. Modern GNOME is awful, terribly opinionated and - in my view - has actual usability issues. Every interaction with the DE felt like pulling teeth and I didn't enjoy it one bit. GNOME Classic was better, but even that never felt quite right. At the time I wanted to use Wayland and therefore had limited options, so for the first time ever I tried Plasma, and I immediately found it to my liking. With only a few small cosmetic tweaks it felt like home. Things made sense to me and everything was where it should be - more or less; nothing's perfect. Since then I've looked at other options, but Plasma usually has one feature or another that alternative desktops lack or struggle with. So for now I'm sticking with Plasma, and I have no real reason to look elsewhere.

To be sure, I don't hate on anyone who prefers GNOME, it's just not my cup of tea. Not by a long shot. Use what works for your use case.

Mostly for the shallow reason of the fact that out of the box KDE looks good enough and since it's big enough I can easily find a theme I like alongside things like cursors and icon sets that just look good. All without the headache of having to make my own sets. I like aesthetics moreso than I should sometimes.

I also like having a fair bit of settings to tweak and don't know if any other DE has integrated a "jiggle the mouse to make the pointer bigger" feature yet. That feature is absolutely something I love, as someone who occasionally loses his cursor.

One adapts to me.

The other requires me to adapt to it.

I like gnome, but, switched back to kde because the extensions I needed broke last fedora update.

I love cosmic, but the keyboard focus doesn't always follow into the correct tab, which was also a deal breaker

The only real issue I have with kde, is Google drive integration isn't baked in at the moment. But, I just use the website, and there were plenty of other solutions I could use too

I tried Gnome a few times, last time maybe 3 years ago, but it just is not the right environment for me. It feels strange and everything is so complicated (most likely because I'm not used to it) and it is so limited when it comes to features and customization.

My first graphic OS was GEOS on the C64 back then, followed by Amiga Workbench, then different flavours of Windows. Using Linux with KDE just feels natural, it has the same usage paradigms and flows as all the OS/Environments I used before.

I had to use MacOSX for some time at work and I had the same issues with it that I had with Gnome, everything was a fight, nothing felt right or was at the place where it has to be.

I test KDE each couple of years: install it on my current OS or in VM, trying to change theme/move panel, get a crash shortly after, then delete it. Even "kde neon" that was supposedly polished distro from devs themselves, crashed within couple of minutes in my hands.

Maybe it just my hands, but Gnome never does that.

Tuning / ricing is overrated. I used to spend ~~hours~~ years ricing my desktop. Screw that, gnome it is: simple, elegant, functional.

I do add 2 very useful plugins tho: Wobbly Windows and the Spinning Cube. Shows my age I guess.

Gnome feels like Linux to me, I don't want discount Windows, I could just use Windows.

I don't need or want to customize every little detail, I have a life.

Testing out KDE broke a lot of video and mouse inputs, don't find it worth trying to fix just to test.

Naming everything with K is dumb as hell.

I started with gnome back when Linux was a very young project. Then they started removing options despite the protests of their users so I moved to kde, which added functionality constantly, much to the delight of their users.

And many years later, here we are.

I used to be a gnome 2 user for a long time. I sometimes tried out KDE but it seemed to unstable so I moved back to gnome.

But the problems started with gnome 3. I had never put much effort into customizing my desktop but I just didn't like the defaults for gnome 3. Even worse some things I didn't were hard to change, some required plug-ins (that sometimes broke) and some just couldn't be fixed at all.

I could use my system but it always felt a bit like I did so begrudgingly. That was when I wasn't using Linux full time. When I finally wanted to ditch windows completely I tried a lot. Different DEs, different distros and so on and I noticed that KDE felt good. I was skeptical but I gave it a real chance and I stayed. It feels good. It's not perfect but I really like it. It is customizable enough but has sensible defaults. It doesn't get in my way and I don't use it begrudgingly.

I use KDE on my desktop, Cinnamon on my laptop. I really dislike the way Gnome looks, but aside from that I'm really dependant on my mouse. Gnome doesn't seem to appreciate that. I also don't like their approach of dumbing things down and forcing their ways on the user.

Back in the day I really liked Unity. It was simple, looked good and optimised the screen like nothing else did at the time. When Ubuntu ditched it, I ditched Ubuntu.

I’ve stuck to KDE because it’s more customizable and the devs don’t try to actively remove features from updates. Gnome might be a cleaner experience, but I don’t want to have to search for alternatives when my favorite gnome extension gets unexpectedly killed by an update.

KDE appears to be much more stable in that regard in that they’re actively trying (Union) to make themes more resilient over time.

I used plasma for nearly a decade and only recently switched off of it because I wanted to try something different. I moved over to GNOME for a bit, and while it was nice, I kept running into issues with customization, specifically Gnome Extensions are a pain in my ass.

I moved to cosmic a few weeks ago on my desktop rig, which is my server, but is also for gaming. I don't want this one to feel like an "office" machine, and cosmic does a great job of feeling like just a computer. On my laptop, which I use for development, I prefer a stable "no-bullshit" interface, as such I use MATE there. MATE, if you're unfamiliar, is the successor to Gnome2. It is a more traditional desktop experience, using familiar idioms. Customization is limited (out of box) compared to the more major DE's like KDE and GNOME

I'll probaby move to Gnome when my hands are too arthritic to operate a mouse and keyboard properly, and I just want to punch big icons and buttons I can barely see anymore. And I'll be too far gone in dementia to customize my desktop anymore, so I won't be able to hurt myself having settings I can mess up. I'll understand where to find apps like "Mail" and "Files" instead of hard names like Thunderbird and Dolphin.

Then Gnome will be fine.

KDE is too inconsistent when it comes to margins and font sizes. I still have it installed on my Desktop PC which ever so often use to see how things are going.

My daily driver (laptop) runs GNOME though. I do not like the slightly too large margins and the flat design (old skeuomorphism icons was peak). It is consistent and despite what everyone says thanks to Extensions customisable enough. Here is my extension list:
- ArcMenu
- Dash to Panel
- Grand theft Focus
- Gtk4 Desktop Icons NG
- Rounded Window Corners Reborn

and of course:
- Activate Linux

It is really cozy and I like it very much. :)

I'm running Plasma at the moment. I actually prefer three look out Gnome and I think I would use it if my home computer was used for anything productive. It's mainly used for gaming though and Gnomes main design doesn't quite flow as well while gaming on a dual screen setup.

It's just easier to be able to see the task bar and all open programs (and sys tray) on my second monitor all the time instead of having to go through a hot cornet or hitting the super button.

Sure, this could be fixed through the use of addons (like Ubuntu has by default for instance) but these tend to break on new versions of Gnome while Plasma just keep working.

My preferred setup while running Gnome was the stock adwaita theme, dag to panel, arc menu and whatever that sys tray addon was called.

If I could have the same look over in Plasma I'd be pretty happy tbh but I haven't really made the effort since it just works the way it is and doesn't look bad doing it either.

I found KDE to be cleaner, they work extremely hard on making GTK apps look like native Qt apps for example. Or how tray Icons (which need a plug in on Gnome) look and behave. On KDE they feel native, Gnomes plugins make them look foreign.

So weirdly enough KDE is imho the cleaner of the two.