Funny argument after Windows 8. So KDE gets marketed as ressort for confused windows xp users?
I enjoyed customizing my workspace for years. Now I use gnome shell, I relax and don't waste brain cycles on irrelevant stuff like which icons show up here or there. I don't use my desktop to do work or anything meaningful.
The file manager has many options that anyone that does any work would be useful, like tabs, splitting the screen, icons/list/detailed view of files, opening a terminal inside the file manager,previews, FTP integrations and all of this is an option, including that you can configure the toolbars to show/hide buttons.
Other example(maybe other DEs have this too) I can have tabs in the terminal app (konsole) and in the tabs that I am SSHed in I use different color scheme(with red on black) so I am aware and not run dangerous commands on a remote server.
My point is that a KDE user is not one that chooses KDE over Gnome due to UI but is more about functionality.
Take Windows as an extreme. Slow as all balls, around 1.5 GB RAM usage and essentially no features that go beyond the basics.
On the other hand, take Enlightenment. It's got fancier graphics effects than KDE, nearly as much customization and I'd say about half the features (which is still a lot more than Windows, GNOME, even Xfce), and it starts up in the blink of an eye, has extremely little lag compared to other DEs, and only uses about 150 MB.
It's also really buggy and not really a complete, polished DE, so despite all its advantages, I would only recommend it, if you really feel comfortable with desktop Linux and don't mind a bit of dicking around to get things working the way you want them to.
And GNOME clocks in at around 1 GB RAM usage, making it the most heavyweight Linux DE, despite it lacking tons of features that pretty much any other DE has.
(KDE nowadays clocks in at around 600 MB, Xfce at around 350 MB.)
I agree that a WM will have less features and eat less memory so if you do not need the features of KDE use a WM. Also you can disable some of KDE features like compositing, akonadi if those are the things you do not need.
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubu-1704...
I am running an older version of KDE and my plasma uses less then 230MB in total(including shared memory)where only one instance of Chrome uses 450Mb and Xorg uses more then plasma for me (it may differ for other versions and configurations)
Gnome Shell is okay if you buy into the exact configuration/vision it presents. If you want anything slightly different, the extension system is a clusterfuck, as an end user. Extensions crash, don’t work with updated versions of Gnome Shell, etc. And several simple functional needs such as hide window title bars (to save screen space) were a pain to get working correctly.
Its Win9X/2k-ist behavior fits me just fine, as i try to ween myself off anything involving the big DEs.
Personally, I'll run away screaming from reading any sort of manual on how to use software, rather than just dicking around with it, so I only really managed to get into tiling WMs with AwesomeWM, which is still relatively graphical.