I think it's fair for some of us to consider the resource usage of a core feature and not really accept "just don't use desktop mode" as a viable suggestion. Especially if half the pitch is "it's a mobile PC." You can't use many of the features it's capable of in gaming mode.
On any 16GB machine you're going to want to close your any ram heavy apps like browsers before starting a game. Switching to gaming mode is an easy way to do that.
It is trivial to switch between gaming mode and desktop mode. I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here.
But anyway, they’re talking about resource usage in desktop mode and saying it doesn’t matter. I think it matters.
Gaming mode skips running the entire desktop environment and runs games in a minimal environment. KDE is fairly lightweight already but come on, how can it compete with something that just displays one window filling the whole screen?
It’s fair to assess the full desktop experience, especially when it’s a core part of the device.
Easier to run or set up? I don't see how it'd be easier for anything other than setting up.
> I can’t open a browser window or discord or anything when in gaming mode
You can, actually! Just add them as non-Steam games. You can have multiple games/programs open in gaming mode and the Steam menu lets you switch between them. Or, if you want it a bit more streamlined, there are Decky Loader plugins that help with these.