Linux

Before:

• Gnome 2 was great
• Gnome 3 was terrible
• KDE 4 was terrible

Today: KDE.

Why not Gnome:

• It's missing basic features.
• General new users startup is:
  • searching online to try and fix things
  • 50% chance of it working.
  • 50% chance of it not working because the fix doesn't work on your version of gnome and having to find another fix
• Common recommendation for missing features (to use extensions) is a non-starter since the extensions break after every update, so every update you need to go back through the general new users startup steps above.

Why KDE:

• It has all the basic features by default, and a bunch of extra stuff.
• General new user process is:
  • looking through settings and changing the 2-3 they care about
  • looking through features, trying them out to see which ones you want to use, turning on/off the 2-3 you care about
  • Never needing to look through or remember the other settings, because your computer is already set up for you.

Future:

• Gnome: more of the same, likely basic features missing until specific people are removed (could be 5-10 years, then another few years of catching up).
• KDE: Will continue making updates and consolidating similar features where it makes sense.
• Cosmic: Will continue sanding off rough edges and fill in last remaining missing features. Will probably surpass Gnome for 90% of user's needs in a year. Will probably be trading blows with KDE in 3 years and will surpass them if KDE ever makes any missteps.

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 used GNOME for work and it was interesting. There are pros and cons, but generally I prefer KDE A LOT and basically made GNOME look like some form of KDE.

GNOME seems to be significantly more stable but also has significantly less features. Both are very important and sadly the stability doesnt seem to have changed much. I still have the panel disappearing after some time etc. KDE got way better here and they want to invest into their CI a lot including memory leak tests. We can also expect improvements due to the funding they get for their 6.6 LTS version (funded by Kubuntu Focus).

GNOME has extensions which can do a lot but have basically no guarantees to be secure or verified or anything, which is very problematic also for security. On GNOME you rely on those even for simple things like a clipboard manager or blur.

I like some GNOME apps, but generally they are just so much worse than KDE apps. They have no up-to-date terminal that has features, like wtf? Their text editor is too simple and they dont have a simple IDE like Kate, theirs is too much "project focused". They dont have a simple image editor, at all. Or a QR code generator, or KDE Connect, or GUI settings for half the things etc.

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 for a couple years just before I croak.

i use gnome for my laptops bc they have touch screens and pen input and shit. i use kde for proper desktop bc it isn’t trying to do stuff i don’t need it to.

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 use both on different computers:
Gnome has auto-rotation out of the box so it goes into the tablet.
KDE has better extensions and wobbly windows so I can make it ~~cursed~~ whimsical enough to my liking

Ι stick with KDE Plasma after trying GNOME, KDE, and Cinnamon. In GNOME, many settings are not available in GUI (I don't remember which they are now), while they are available in KDE. And back when I used Cinnamon it didn't support Wayland while some of my apps (especially Waydroid) needs Wayland. But I mostly use CLI for daily tasks for automation and easier copy-pasting forum answers, asking LLM, and sharing to GitHub, so I may not be a representative DE user.

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.

• Gnome has consistently moved away from a desktop experience and towards one that is geared towards touch screens. Which is fair enough, I suppose. But it's not what I want. I don't want bigger, more colorful icons that are more friendly to a touch screen. I don't want drag gestures to do everything in my laptop...that's what my tablet is for. By trying to make something that works for both, they don't excel at either one and just end up making a mid-version of either experience.

• Its design is trying to make things "easy" for people by taking away their choice, which I fundamentally disagree with. To me, making things easier is about making sane defaults that people don't need to change, but leaving those options for when the user gets more familiar. Taking out the ability entirely is dystopian windows level "you do what we tell you and you'll like it" levels of glazing.

• This is minor, but the fact that I need to have Firefox in order to do anything of any substance in terms of what little customization there is on Gnome just bothers me. Why does your desktop still rely on another project in order to achieve full functionality?

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 switch back and forth based on which one has the smallest number of annoying bugs. Right now, I'm on KDE because they finally fixed a long-standing refresh rate bug, and because gnome has serious trouble keeping the mouse clamped to the right screen in UE5 games without the assistance of gamescope

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 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.

One adapts to me.

The other requires me to adapt to it.

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

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

I'm sticking with KDE because I like to have some say in how my computer behaves, like I prefer to have a sidepanel with useful things and not top panel with calendar. I also like to have window buttons like minimize, maximize, close, pin, etc.

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 like 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 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.

Gnome always felt too basic and minimalist. KDE feels powerful and like I can do anything I want. On KDE I don't ask myself "can i do this?", I ask myself "how do I do this?"

I use KDE. I found GNOME annoying and extemely opinionated. I also got turned off by it when I asked a question on mastodon like a year ago about an issue I was having with GNOME and an actual GNOME dev replied to me and essentially said I was using the DE wrong. basically I wasn't using it the way the GNOME devs use it.

GNOME. It's clean, I like it, and I don't feel the need to customize it.

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!

Gnome. I am often tempted to switch to kde because it is often ahead in terms of adopting new technologies, but gnome is just more comfortable to use. And I was not able to customize kde to have gnome-like workflow.

I used KDE for years only recently switched to Niri, what I can say for KDE is I don't have to dicking around config files and nice features that are missing from other WM/DE like ICC profiles and HDR also very easy to customize. The reason I switch is because KDE getting too good and boring and using Niri reminded me when I use Linux for the first time again (same with switching from Windows to Linux because Windows is boring and barely customizable and cuntpilot)

GNOME visually reminds me of iPadOS (not good) and just hasn't been as intuitive as KDE. Both are usable, KDE just came easier to me.

KDE just works. The few things I want to change I can. GNOME by default is further away from what I want and you have to get extensions that break with updates to change anything.

Gnome is simple and clean. It gets out of my way and functions the way I expect a modern DE to function.

the gnome on the distro I had before did not work well with windows snapping so I installed kde. my current distro kde is the default.

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.

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.

I've used both pretty extensively (years daily driving each) but these days I just use stock KDE, with maybe a couple little adjustments to the taskbar. I like both. I can adapt to different desktop workflows, GNOME's is good, but I found myself always using plugins to make it work more like a windows desktop. I generally like the KDE suite of default applications a lot more than GNOME's, like Dolphin is just a better file manager than nautilus. And if I'm going to use KDE applications and a windows-styled desktop layout, at that point I might as well just use KDE.

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 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.

I got tired of "customizing" everything and just wanted to get work done. GNOME is the default on many distros, so I learned the intended workflow instead of fighting it. Now I can just install a distro and be productive immediately instead of spending time tweaking things.

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.

XFCE!

In all serious, while I use XFCE on most personal things, if I was pressed to choose between the big two, I think I'd choose KDE over GNOME; in fact, when I had to loan my younger sibling a laptop recently and that laptop was too old to run Windows 11, I put them on Debian with KDE. I think KDE is also my backup plan if major applications start dropping xorg support before XFCE has implemented sufficient Wayland support, although they seem to be making progress.

Out of the box, KDE tends to be more Windows-like and just better for my workflow in general, while GNOME can just be... weird. Like, I don't quite hate GNOME as much as I used to - I plan on throwing it on an old Surface tablet soon - but like others have said, it's very opinionated and doesn't like customization and whatnot. I also resent GNOME in the sense that they tend to make design designs (such as in GTK 4) that reduce ease of interoperability across different open source desktops.

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.