I don't usually post an opinionated note, but this is 2025 and I'll try to write something.

Honestly, I much more prefer Gnome than KDE (plasma). This is totally personal preferences but I have my reasons.

I heard a lot of people (on the internet, ofc) said that KDE (plasma) is the best desktop. It's customization is superb, no longer krashes, and so on. And that Gnome sucks, the devs were assholes, no customization, and so on. Truth to be told, that's not what I have personally experienced.

Before that, I'll talk about my journey in gnu/linux world.

My journey began at my uni in 2010, and my first distro is Ubuntu 10.04. It comes with old gnome 2 desktop, and I like what I had at that time. Time goes on, I try to stay on linux as long as possible, and still maintain Windows on my machine at that time with dual boot for uni's task that requires Windows's application and/or for gaming (linux gaming practically almost non-existent at that time besides emulator). I still use old gnome, but with such customization that it didn't resemble gnome at all. Then gradually, I moved to wm only (my first wm was subtlewm) but occassionally I switched back and forth to gnome. The good ol' ricing day. I'm totally comfortable with navigating my workspace using keyboard only, and managing window(s) using keybinding (shortcut) was my joy in life.

Then I stumbled upon Archlinux, and it's been mostly my daily driver til much later (with a lot of reinstall, ofc, being archlinux and all). Being a gnome user for a long time, my first choice was to install archlinux with gnome. Not long after that, gnome change its direction (gnome 3) with something that I do not actually hate, but rather it's just something that I'm not comfortable with yet at that time. Gnome 3 actually was eye catching at first, but with its humongous top panel and title bar, my 1366x768 screen feels too cramped and since then I abandoned all things related to gnome and take a full dive in wm-only environment. Openbox was my favorite back then, and xmonad second. But I occassionally tried other desktop environments on my other machine just because. Gnome, KDE, Xfce, Mate, even Pantheon. I'm just that like that.

Then I graduated. I was working as a programmer and try to use Archlinux as much as possible. Until I switched company, and my new workplace issued a work-related laptop that was preinstalled with Windows. Now, I have several machines. Work-issued laptop using Windows, my desktop then became a Windows machine too (for gaming and working purpose, mostly for gaming though), and my personal laptop that still on Archlinux. I used my personal laptop just for browsing on the internet and small projects, nothing serious. But I still prefer using my customized wm-only Archlinux than my other 2 windows machines.

Life happens. I got a steady job, gotten married, have kids, operating system didn't matter, let alone desktop environments. I just use what I had at the time, mostly windows on my work-issued laptop. My desktop was so last decade I didn't bother to do anything on it. My personal laptop was, gone. I don't remember exactly how, but it's out of the picture. Wether I donate it or it's broken I forgot. I have no real linux machine.

Then last year, I built a new pc. And I specifically choose all "red" because I heard it's great with linux, since open source and all. So I built my pc with ryzen as the cpu, and radeon as the gpu. At first I installed Fedora on it because that's what I have ready on hand. It's working alright. Fedora being a Gnome distro, comes with authentic gnome experience, and, yeah. Gnome actually not bad. Not bad at all. It's good rather. It feels so polished. It's true that the customization is limited but I didn't really care. All my needs are covered, the gesture was nice, the keybinding was on point, and the workspace management was, I don't know, automatic(?), I guess. It's like having a tailored experience. This is maybe what they call "The Gnome Experience" that I could only appreciate recently. I have already tried gnome shell long time ago, and I already know what is what within, but I never realized its purpose, or rather, its excellence. Only when I embraced it and accept it for the way it is, I could finally see why.

I don't want to turn this into gnome circlejerk, so TL;DR, I tried gnome after a long time and it's actually good, coming from a tiling wm enjoyer.

Next is my experience with KDE Plasma.

The last time I tried KDE Plasma was when they released plasma 6. I tried to set up my plasma desktop the way I want, mimicking what Unity desktop had before, with global menu and all, integrated window button on the left side of global menu, launcher on the left side. You know, because that's what plasma was advertised, customization. And I don't know why, I broke my desktop. Global menu behaves weirdly. Sometimes it shows menu, sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes it crashed with error popup. And then the launcher. Using plasma default panel, I moved to left, vertical. And then I tried to rearrange it so that any widget/plugins beside launcher was moved to top panel alongside global menu. I messed it up. When drag n drop'ing from panel to another panel, the widget/plugin detach itself from the panel, and attached itself to the desktop. Then I have to click it again, and I thought I had to drop it to the top panel but, I was wrong. It disappeared. I don't know where. Okay, so I just need to add the same widget/plugin to the top panel manually. But the problem is, I don't know the name. So I guessed the name and try some with similar name or meaning. I'm kinda bad at this.

That left me a bad impression. I kinda fed up and went back to gnome. Let's try to wait for some time til it was stable enough, I thought.

And then, not long ago, I tried KDE Plasma, again. One or two weeks ago. I guess global menu is a no no based on the last experience. I tried using it vanilla. It's.. okay, I guess? It reminds me a lot of Windows, with less polished menu layout. It kinda overwhelm me. When I opened dolphin, so many clutters(?) to put it into words. I don't really enjoy the feeling. The sidebar, the layout button, zoom, even the volume bar information. It feels too cluttered for me. And it feels so rigid(?). There're so many lines.

Maybe it's the theme, I thought. I tried to change the theme. There're a few choices. Breeze, Oxygen, and something I can't remember. Nothing good for my eyes. So I tried to install a third party theme. Funnily enough, I got an error again. It failed to connect or something it says. I tried to refresh repeatedly until it could display the third party themes. Let's pick one of them, I thought. I choose Nordic(?) or something, it's downloading, and then error again. What is this? Is this "The KDE Experience"? I got a little fed up and tried to stick with the default theme.

Let's try to do something more productive. I opened code editor, and try to do some work. I did some projects on mobile platform. I spun up emulator, and start coding again. Usually, to avoid confusion, I placed my code editor and emulator on different workspace so I can focus on one thing at a time. I usually moved my window using keybind (shortcut), so I look for it in plasma. I can't move my window to next workspace. What gives? There's no next workspace. I need to create it first. How? I have to go to overview. By? Dragging my mouse to left corner of the screen, then click "+" button. Can I automate this process somehow? I don't know, maybe? Will I bother? No.

It's too windows-like, or more like, too mouse-centric. I already accustomed to keyboard-centric workflow. Some may argue, it's just fraction of seconds to switch to mouse and then back to the keyboard. It's not about how long, but how many energy I have to put up with it. It eventually piles up and kinda destroy the focus. How about creating a perfect environment then? The argument is, you can do what you want with kwin scripts, or customize its keybind, something something customization. The reality is, I don't want to do it. I have no energy to fiddle with customization anymore. If it's the young me, the me in my uni days, I might prefer plasma since I'm crazy about customization. I even wrote a lot of scripts to use in tandem with my tiling wm to make an interesting desktop screenshot to post on r/unixporn. But that day was no more. I don't want to tinker. I don't want to rice. I want my desktop environment as an app launcher and stay out of my way, not a canvas to paint. Why spend so much time in something as vain as tinkering with desktop when I can just install another desktop that suits my need?

KDE Plasma is clearly not for me.

That being said, Gnome is not without its flaws either. But for now I can kinda put up with it. It can be solved with one or two simple solution. Like, how can there're no systray when there're many applications that can only be relaunched with it? One of them that I use is FDM. I just install an extension and be done with it.

And I kinda like how gnome handles application menu. It's a drawer that display list of apps, kinda like mobile app. It's easier to navigate and I can just type the name in overview.

Yeah, I think that's it. Maybe Gnome is for people like me.