I have been using kubuntu for many years and I love the KDE desktop environment and even if I switch to arch I will continue to use it. 
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Welcome to the KDE Discuss Forum.
An answer to you question isnāt easy but, yes, my preferred Desktop Environment is KDE Plasma ā with the caveat that, a Linux distribution which provides a rolling KDE Plasma version support is more comfortable than one which updates slowly with dreams of Long Term Support ā which the KDE folks no longer support.
The world is moving faster and faster ā KDE Plasma also ā¦ 
> kinfo
Operating System: openSUSE Tumbleweed 20260217
KDE Plasma Version: 6.6.0
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.23.0
Qt Version: 6.10.2
Kernel Version: 6.19.2-1-default (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 12 Ć AMD Ryzen 5 8600G w/ Radeon 760M Graphics
Memory: 34 GB of RAM (32.8 GB usable)
Graphics Processor: AMD Radeon 760M Graphics
>
> dolphin --version
dolphin 25.12.2
>
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we are currently experience a higher than normal call volume over the release of plasma 6.6, but my experience on the Kubutnu LTS track has been rock solid with none of these issues currently being discussed here.
things will settle out as the bug reports roll in and i expect by the time my LTS track gets to plasma 6 things will be as smooth for me as they are right now.
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I always use kubuntu LTS. tās always more stable and reliable for me. Gaming has become super accessible on Linux. I remember having to use Wine back in the day for even the simplest of games. Glad to see proton is finally allowing a click-and-play experience. What are your thoughts on gaming on linux? Have you had good experiences? I would love to hear your thoughts.
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iāve installed several games from the native .deb steam package and they all work just as well (or better) than they work worked in windows.
but they do require being reinstalled onto a linux partition, rather than trying to get proton to run your windows install from an NTFS partitionā¦ i keep mine on a separate ext4 partition from my /home so they donāt get caught in my daily backups.
when migrating my EliteDangerous game, there were certain log files and bindings that i needed to copy from the windows install to the proton install but it wasnāt difficult to find the right folders once you identified the game ID.
as long as your game is listed in protondb.com as silver or better, you should should not have much of an issue.
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I have been using KDE for more 20 years now. I have tried different Desktops OSs once in a while, but always come back. Most of all, Linux & KDE allow me far more flexibility for tweaking it to my needs than anything else I tried, while still beeing reliable and full of features.
On Gaming: I mostly play games that have a native linux version (using steam). And sometimes old stuff via fs-uae or dosbox. Sadly, several native linux versions of games are not well done and will cease to function after a few years (some examples: DeusEx MD, Half-Life Alyx, Lords of Xulima). Thanks to proton I can at least play the windows version (or games without a linux release) without any problems
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I run Fedora 43 KDE Plasma 6.6.0, using the latest Plasma version for a couple of days now. I love it except for one thing: Somehow it lost contrast ? / sharpness ?. Most of the Fonts are a lighter colour of grey.
Arch and Plasma go together, in the words of John C. Reilly, ālike cocaine and waffles.ā
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IMHO, there is nothing else like Plasma and most of KDE apps are pretty good too, with some exceptions. Itās basically the only UI option for Linux imho but it also happens to be rather good. I love the customization and the options. Plasma and Dolphin are also light years ahead of anything that ever came out of Microsoft.
However, at times I refer to it as krashy desktop environment. Itās worse with NVIDIA but even with AMD GPU I get frequent freezes, the UI just stops responding, no mouse and keyboard input. If I leave it for few minutes it sometimes recovers, but often I have to press the reset button which is not a good feeling. I looked around for months and I have no idea what the problem is. I donāt use any extensions or widgets besides what come stock with Plasma. I even stopped using third party icon sets (Kora) to keep as close to vanilla as possible, but no luck.
Dolphin hates NFS shares, crashes when simply browsing them. I stopped using NFS for that reason.
Then there are frequent minor bugs, glitches and regressions. Like repeating SMB issues last year or widgets being broken on and off. Some bugs come and go and then come back again. Like the vertical pipe in the Digital Clock widget, how many times was that fixed? KRDP still doesnāt work with Windows client either. These are not major issues and can be lived with but I wish this was all better.
I also donāt like some of the recent changes to the UI. Like the black and white glyph icons in the side bar if I set icons to āsmallā.
Italicized aliases that canāt be changed for reasons 
Lack of flexibility in Dolphin date and time display is my pet peeve with Plasma.
I mostly use KDE with Fedora so the instability might be a Fedora thing, donāt know. Iāve ran Debian and Kubuntu briefly and I feel like Plasma was more stable on those, but it was an older version of Plasma so there is that.
KDE makes some nice apps too like KFind, KCron, KConnect, etc. Kwrite/Kate is the best text editor for Linux imho, I wonāt miss Notepad++ much. Spectacle is awesome too. Gwenview, Filelight, Partition Manager, etc., all quality software.
Though both their music players Elisa and Amarok are weak. This is my other pet peeve with Linux in general: no music player that is close to MusicBee or Foobar2000. Fooyin shows promise but if Elisa had smart playlists I might be using that already.
I also never cared much for KMail and Konqeror, I prefer Thunderbird and Firefox as theyāre truly cross-platform and I can move profiles at will between Windows and Linux.
Krita could be a real Photoshop/Affinity alternative if only KDE stopped pretending itās a āpainting appā. Sunset Showfoto and fully develop Krita into an image editing powerhouse. This alone would make Linux much more inviting for may switchers from Windows and Mac.
Overall, yeah KDE is synonymous with Linux desktop to me. Even though I only use Linux desktop part time still.
Iām very postively impressed with the full capability of this alpha version. From a usability standpoint, itās been all but indistinguishable from my long experience with Kubuntu. Flatpaks have been available for all the apps I use, and installation was easy-peasey. My only speed bump was not being able to figure out shared folders for virt-manager, but Iāve got an adequate workaround using ssh.
Itās so solid-seeming that Iām tempted to move it to (home/personal) production use, though I think Iāll wait at least until the goal to shrink OS updates to a reasonable size is achieved.
Clearly, the folks assembling this distro know what yāall are doing. Kudos!
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I am running Linux for 6 month on desktop now, but I was falling in love with KDE 10 years ago when I tried Linux for the first time. Back these days Gaming was just not ready and even my hours on trying to fix things end up in better results of my most played game back these days, but still not playable enough. So I delayed my switch. These days installing games are mostly straight forward, thanks to WINE team, Valves refinements and other communities to remove Steam dependencies (most games are bought DRM-free without Steam). Anyway, back to KDE:
I am running it on Debian 13, so it is not the most up to date version, but I also do not need to deal a lot with regressions. On the other hand there are a lot of minor bugs in all edges and corners. I hope the higher donations will help KDE to get polished in the upcoming years. Nevertheless it is the best desktop experience I ever had. I prefer bugs over restrictions. I am little bit worry about two new design decisions that are made (I mentioned elsewhere), but overall I see a lot of improvements coming over the next years.
A lot of KDE applications are pretty cool. Dolphin, Kate and Konsole are my most used ones. kdeconnect, kdenlive and KolourPaint could need some improvements. I am using kdenlive for over 10 years and in general it is good. Krita will may replace some GIMP-tasks, because GIMP is very inefficient on some tasks I really need often. I also can imagine to fully replace GIMP, but that depends on how Krita will fit into my use case. Once Neochat is be full-featured I probably will drop Element.
As browser I am using LibreWolf, since it is the better Firefox. I donāt see any alternative right now and hope for Servo-Engine in future. The best browser that will build on top of Servo will have the change to become my new main browser (as long as required extensions are available). But we are probably at least 10 years away from this.
On phone KDE could not convince me. Sorry KDE, but GNOME is much better at this place. And I say this as a person who even hates using GNOME in a VM environment. KDE also has no convergent applications.
At the end KDE does not need to convince me everywhere. KDE is awesome for all these things I am using and also for those that are used by other people than me. But it still requires refinements around the edges.
This is very likely Making sure you're not a bot! . Apparently it even affects Windows, too. Thereās a workaround listed in there.
Iāve applied the workaround to KDE Linux so no AMD users need to suffer from it anymore.
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Thanks! Not sure if I can handle that workaround.
That is weird though. Why would there be such anti-bot feature in a desktop OS? This happens twice a day or more. No, I never saw this happen on Windows.
Iām pretty sure this was happening when I had an NVIDIA GPU too though back then Iād just blame any instability on NVIDIA
Gonna try again with an NVIDIA GPU some time again perhaps.
This does not happen after a period of inactivity either but when Iām actively mousing around Dolphin and it always seems to be triggered by a mouse click. Like, Iād click on a window close button or click on a file or icon on the desktop and the UI locks up.
BTW, I do use VRR, either GSYNC or Freesync, so yeah, maybe thatās related? Iāve also read there are some issues using Freesync over HDMI (which is my case), but I use GSYNC over DP, so I really donāt know if these are related.
The issue responsible isnāt actually āMaking sure youāre not a bot!ā. Thatās just the āpreviewā that Discourse displays because it canāt bypass the linked websiteās anti-bot protection to retrieve the title of the issue.
The actual issue you see when you click the link is a driver bug, raised in AMDās Gitlab repo.
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Currently I use several operating systems like Fedora and Arch Linux-based, so KDE Plasma performs well in its most up-to-date version, as do the kernels. The performance is considerable and there are no bugs.
Even the Plasma developers would not make this claim 
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At least in my experience, there isnāt.