I don’t mean for this to become a KDE vs GNOME post. I’m looking at switching to Fedora (because Arch is a pain), and it seems that GNOME is more supported. I use KDE on Arch. What features would I be losing if I were to switch? (ex: toolbar management, KRunner, etc.)
GNOME extensions pick up a lot of slack if you want a dock or other UI features, extensions.gnome.org has a whole host of useful customizations. I also use a quick search/run popup launcher (ulauncher) so I don’t have to dip into the overview unless I want to see all of my open windows or drag things between workspaces.
I’m not really into the whole “which DE is better” thing. I think if you like one or the other you should just use it and get on with your life - trying to prove that one or the other is outright better is a waste of time, DE choice is entirely down to preference.
That said, I really like GNOME - it largely just gets out of the way and allows you to focus on what you’re doing. The overview and workspace handling in GNOME is top notch IMO and everything I want to launch or find can be accessed quickly with hotkeys or other shortcuts. My main beef with KDE is that it’s both too customizable and yet not quite customizable enough, when I try it every couple of years I inevitably spend a couple of days configuring settings to suit, get annoyed that I can’t quite get it to do what I want and promptly relog into a GNOME session.
Speaking of - OP, if you want to compare the two just install KDE on Arch and start a KDE session from your login manager. You don’t have to pick one or the other, you can try both and compare them before you make your distro switch.
Totally agree. They behave differently by default, but they are both so customizable that you can make either one behave almost exactly like the other if you want. I like KDE’s defaults a bit more than Gnome’s, and I like Dolphin more than Nautilus, but I could go back to Gnome and be comfortable within a day. I’d need to spend a little time finding the right extensions and then I’d be good.
It’s not like 20 years ago when there was strong motivation to commit to one ecosystem or another. Back then, running Gnome/GTK apps under KDE was kind of funky, and vice-versa. Nowadays, everything is pretty seamless.
This extension is also great https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/5489/search-light/. It provides the overview search bar without moving everything around like the regular overview.