Well, now that I have a better opportunity to comment, I can say that it’s not simply a case of “KDE is better” or “[DE name] is better or worse than another”. Each have their own characteristics, including good and bad features, and general appeal. The “best desktop environment” is entirely subjective.
I used earlier versions of Gnome and (I suppose) I was generally fine with it, though it was nothing remarkable; I was never fond of the Adwaita theme.
What I did dislike was the progressive dumbing down of the UI – so much so, that features one would normally expect should be exposed to the User simply were not available.
There are many examples of this if one takes the time to do some serious research, or happens to enjoy even more serious rants; no doubt there are still plenty of those to be found on the topic.
One could argue that a measure of how well a DE satisfies its Users; or, how good it is generally; is directly proportional to the number of forks of that DE that exist.
Gnome certainly has the most.
Many are instantly recognisable popular DE’s today; spawned by an overwhelming lack of confidence in the direction(s) Gnome was taking.
Budgie, Cinnamon, Deepin, Mate, Pantheon, Unity, Zorin are a some that come to mind. In comparison, popular forks of KDE are few – LXDE and LXQt come to mind as I write.
Today, KDE’s Plasma is a breath of fresh air (to me) and I cannot see myself being easily swayed from using it on performant machines available today.
Manjaro KDE, coupled with AMD graphics and Wayland, is a combination that has proven both stable and trouble-free for this User.
The ability to customise my desktop experience unhindered by opinionated defaults has been a positive influence brought about by choosing KDE Plasma as my desktop environment.
I hope this goes some way toward answering your question.
Regards.
