It's not an apples to apples comparison.
My Opensuse Tumbleweed KDE idles at ~700MB RAM usage so I have no idea what the author's Fedora does with KDE that it idles at 1.4GB RAM.
I mean, I definitely expect differences between distros, but 2x the RAM usage feels really strange. There's either a bug/memory leak, or several apps are cached or running in the background.
I feel for such comparisons, it would be also fair to list the "ps -aux" for each DE somewhere so that readers can dig a bit deeper into the results if they want and see what exaclty is running
I suspect if we were to tests all these DEs on Arch or OpenSUSE, some of these results would look completely different, at least for the major "gass-guzzers" like GNOME and KDE, so IMHO, the jury is still out on them.
Still, I appreciate that the author has gone through this effort for these tests.
Edit: they used fedora, I see it now.
I use none and it's fine for me.
GNOME is not an alternative to Windows. Linux is an operating-system for its own, building upon UNIX and Plan9. Especially Systemd is giving Linux a very own foundation. That said, we don't apply Emacs shortcuts on VIM because it degrades the provided features and make usage even harder. Humans are pretty good in adapting - one of our best features. An analogy - don't try to ride bicycle like a car. It won't work.
PS: Best results with GNOME are with novice users. GNOME tends to be very keyboard centric and allows focus on your applications. These novice users don't try to apply usage patterns learned on Windows.
Just out of curiosity, how many of these novices do you expect there to be? Also if you only target this group of people who have never used Windows, how do you expect to serve the massive number of people who started with Windows and made their way to Linux? Or do we not matter compared to that other group?
Most kids start their computing experience with tablets and mobile phones. Gnome has a very similar desktop metaphor being made to work as well on regular computers and tablets. My 9 and 12y/old daughters have never used windows and they are autonomous on the Fedora + Gnome laptop I lend them when needed for their homework or to watch streaming services.
PS: Most computer courses fail to teach usage of computers. We need to read the computers output, understand it and then input. And for interaction a very "high-level" of the concept how a program works is needed. Instead most computer courses merely teach "and now we click on the blue icon" which leave helpless users. Interestingly TUIs seem to a magnitude better then GUIs, only text and focus on the task. A lean GUI helps somewhat. And websites? Horrible. HN is a seldom exception, just text from left-to-right, top-to-bottom.
I haven't used it for a while, but I found that for certain audio controls, or to allow certain window layouts, I've needed to install extensions. I also found the information it provides about wifi to be less than adequate, and I'd imagine that you'd need to install extensions to fix that. KDE provides a running graph of traffic to/from a Wifi endpoint, and other information that you might not have considered.
And if I want graph for any kind of metrics I usually use netdata.
I think gnome defaults works for anyone that subscribe to their desktop metaphor. I like it, some don't, but I don't think that is because it is not complete. It is certainly less configurable out of the box than KDE though and I understand why some people would prefer KDE.
"Oh, just click the volume icon"
Turns out there is a whole panel of unrelated settings hidden you can see either clicking on the logout button or volume button... It's actually the same button. I am generally against hiding settings in menus and submenus but if you're going to, can it at least be a universal cog icon?
Seems more like the product of an artist-architect willing to sacrifice everyday usability to commit to his "vision". In our case the system tray must look symmetric and bare. I do want tools not get in my way but not out of the picture.
I think it is more intuitive for the people used to android (not sure about iOS, can't be too sure it has been to much time I have been using it). On android most quick configuration parameters such as luminosity is accessed by sliding the upper part of the screen which do not have a cog icon either and a similar appearance to that gnome systrayish area.
My biggest critics is that those controls aren't afaik directly accessible with a keyboard shortcut ( super + something) while said controls can, like many things in gnome, perfectly be navigated with a keyboard.
I haven't seen for age laptops and even standalone keyboards that do not have either dedicated buttons or function keys to manage luminosity though and can't think of any good reason to use the mouse to do that.
I also added Openweather and Wobbly Windows, just because :).
Then for comfort I have Pop shell and hot edge.
Also, LXQT starts up instantly from login screen, KDE takes 2-10 seconds even if I disable as many things as possible from settings.
Apart from that, I have a generally high opinion of KDE.