Gnome remains the most popular Linux desktop, despite the hatred it receives from hardcore Linux users, just because it's the default in Ubuntu and Fedora.
Other than Aurora Shell, but many people prefer to separate ChromeOS from other Linux Distros.
When KDE started, it was strongly influenced by CDE. It became more Windows-y with every major(ish) version, while Windows did not get any (relevant) inspiration from CDE.
Indeed, KDE is like Windows, which is sad, because I don't like the desktop metaphor, yet KDE is the only group that is concerned with usability and improves the system with every release.
I actually don't mind the GNOME metaphor... but they make it less and less usable over each release. Philosophically, what they are talking about sounds great, but pragmatically the system is just getting less and less usable. UX consistency is good, but not when it comes at the expense of functionality. Also, I don't like that GNOME has been ideologically captured by the extreme left.
Back in the day I ran WindowMaker and FVWM, but nowadays, with Wayland, HiDPI screens and expectations of integration, it is not a viable strategy anymore.
Usable and lack of additional functionality are absolutely different things. Gnome is the most usable DE in linux, and a default for major distributions for a reason. It’s simple, it’s coherent, pretty much never breaks and just in general designed to bother you as less as possible so you can just do your work.
KDE tries to satisfy anyone with all kinds of options, but as a result most of such options are half baked and DE starts to fall apart with memory leaks and inconsistency as soon as you’re deviating from default experience enough. I do like KDE’s innovations and attempts to get as maximum performance as possible, but sad truth is that in he last 15 years I’m trying fresh KDE once in a year or two, but have to crawl back to gnome after about a week, as small but annoying problems, memory leaks or inconsistencies result in frustration.
> general designed to bother you as less as possible so you can just do your work
I have heard this so many times about Gnome yet no one explains how a desktop environment can "bother" a user so that they can't focus on their work. In fact, Gnome decision to show notification at the top middle of screen is the most distracting thing a DE can do.
I agree that plasmashell does have memory related issue but at least it is not part of the compositor (unlike gnome-shell which is the desktop shell and the compositor using mutter library) so that you can just kill it and restart it without having to logout.
