There are daily threads started by new users who say stuff like “I read that systemd is bad, should I switch to [insert systemd-less distro here]” or “My RTX 4080 runs Sim City 2000 at 12 FPS, is Linux trash?”, so there seems to be a need to at least help alleviate the fears of people who read conflicting stuff (or downright flamewars) on the internet and might be overwhelmed by those conflicts.
Sorry, the goal here was to offer a few sensible alternatives, not overwhelm the reader with choices. The gist here is “start with something solid, reputable and popular, branch out later”.
Too much choices lead to analysis paralysis, and to goal here is to learn how to swim first. There are dozens of great distros, probably more than half of that worthy to be on this list, as there are dozens of great DEs, probably more than half of that worthy to be on this list.
True. Although this post is less a comparison of the two than a renewed appreciation of what makes Gnome fantastic, especially the QOL parts taken for granted for so long ;)
Exactly. KDE people praise its flexibility and tweakability, but I feel it tries to cater at too many use cases at once, and looks much harder to maintain as it always felt buggy and a bit janky to me.
Gnome devs may have very strong opinions and that seems to anger some people, but their approach is actually the best for small teams: focus on a single use case, make it as polished as possible, and let users develop extensions to cater to their own use cases.