I’m trying GNOME now in TW, but I don’t like it. I can’t say it for sure, but it feels slow. Some apps are freezing. Even typing here is kind of slow. KDE seems more optimized. I think KDE is a better choice, at least in terms of speed.
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Ultimately, it depends on what you’re doing and what your system configuration is.
I’ve used GNOME for years, and haven’t had any issues with performance. KDE is also known to be somewhat resource-heavy, but again, depends on what you’re doing.
If your system is under-spec (low memory, slower CPU), you might look at a lightweight desktop like Cinnamon, FVWM, or something similar to that. They don’t have all the bells and whistles that KDE Plasma and GNOME have, but those bells and whistles take up resources, and if you’re resource-constrained, getting rid of those is going to help.
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Long time ago I was using Ubuntu Studio, a distro made for artist. It was XFCE from the beginning, but they switched to KDE. I imagine it was not for beauty. GNOME looks more minimalistic, so it supposed to be much faster. KDE looks more heavy, and it supposed to be much slower. But for me is the other way around.
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If it works for you and you like it, then that’s what you should use. Desktop Environment choice is a personal one, and having choices available means you can use the one you like and others can use the ones they like.
Having the choice is a wonderful thing. Arguing about “which is better” is like trying to figure out what the “best color” is, or “best tasting food” is. There is no “best” - only what is “best” for you.
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In my humble opinion it is a sign of bloat when the desktop environment requires hardware acceleration.
So don’t use it. Use something you like.
This is topic for general chat, not for technical support area.
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Fair point. Moved. 
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When it came time to move from KDE, I chose Xfce. Very snappy, very stable.
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I use xfce on a daily basis as my main DE. In one of my tumbleweed with xfce I installed SDDM, kwin_x11 and plasma_ x11 session. The only additional qt application is convertall and krita as I already have application installed in xfce. The memory usage between the two is comparable. I look at it a while ago and xfce is using 1.1GB Ram at login and plasma_x11 is using 1.2GB Ram. When running application eg: blender it looks like it is more snappier than xfce. Just my two cents. 
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Test out several DE’s and use what works best for you. I used Gnome and it didn’t suit my workflow. I liked Cinnamon and MATE, they actually were just as fast as XFCE on my machine. KDE seemed different than it was about a decade ago with the bloat. Switched and kept using it without issue.
Although I’m not much a fan of them, test out some tiling managers as well.
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Faster: I’m a studio engineer. I run anything from 5 to 100 channels of audio (mono/stereo) in real time in ReaperDAW for mixing. On each channel I use plugin-effects. From my perspective I can tell you that the most “loaded” projects don’t even play in Gnome. When I’m in Gnome, I can load about 30% fewer plugins than in KDE or XFCE in the same project on the same computer.
So from my experience Gnome it is about 30% resource heavier than KDE or XFCE.
Stable: Both Gnome and KDE are HUGE projects. Small bugs can be found here and there. If you need stability you can use a point release distro model like Leap.
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GNOME on both Fedora and openSUSE TW for me has a gamble with logging in; it either logs in fine, or freezes at the gray screen after entering my pass. Numerous reports about it on Arch and Manjaro, seen it myself since late F38, and oS was the last safe distro until last month.
GNOME willingly breaking their own Weather app locations (GTK4) and then can’t be being bothered to fix it also makes me question their priorities.
I used GNOME since around the start of 3 and preferred it, but now its unstable.
Now I use KDE Plasma and I’m pleased with it!
The speed of both GNOME 46 and Plasma 6 (6.0.4 and 6.0.5) was pretty good; no real difference, but I like being able to disable the compositor on-demand with Plasma!
I would highly recommend KDE to anyone. It works wonderfully! My idle usage on my laptop (which is atleast 7 years old) is around 5-10%. Also if you really like the look of GNOME you can always install themes and icon packa to make it look like GNOME. That’s the beauty of KDE, you can make it look like basically anything, even windows (which is disgusting, but follow your heart i guess).
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HI. in fact it’s my favorite desktop too. In vm virtualbox, inexplicably, it is always the smoothest. I install TW with some customizations: block during installation of kalendarac and pim-kde
Just curious, what is the merit of doing that?
Hi @40476 old Intel core2 duo hardware and 4gb of ram…
Ah, i see.
My favourite main apps also influenced my choice. True, you can use KDE main apps in GNOME (or vice-versa) but this brings in lots of additional libraries etc across. I was using Ubuntu GNOME, but when I returned to OpenSUSE I changed to KDE , on preference, but also so as to run my favourite KDE apps without having to add all the extra libraries needed to a GNOME installation.
Way back I thought that GNOME was faster, but I can’t say I noticed a difference now.
As a long time KDE user, definitely Gnome lul
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