Since they changed the desktop UI (UX?) Gnome has felt somewhat alien and even cringy to me. Nonetheless I have been using it for years just because in Debian it happens to be the default; after my recent switch to Slackware which doesn't include it, I started using KDE, and now I feel right at home.
I've definitely had a bunch of weird KDE quirks on multiple distros (Kubuntu, KDE Neon, etc). Nothing huge for me but still annoying. I do tend to prefer it over Gnome, but I am thinking of changing
What do you mean when you say that Gnome is the default in Debian? Every time I installed Debian in the last 10+ years, it showed a list of checkboxes with desktop environments to select in the installer. So you can install 0, 1 or more desktop environments during Debian installation. I'm asking, because I see it repeated in a couple places that Gnome is the default, and I feel that I'm missing something.
GNOME seems to take more Mac cues, as someone that grew up on (and has always used) Macs I feel like GNOME fits me better. It's also designed to be very keyboard navigable.
I think that's okay, KDE and GNOME can coexist and approach things differently, but standardize on things that matter through FreeDesktop.org
