The KDE spin of Fedora is very good,there has been rumblings about switching to KDE as the main repo DE. I’d say Gnome is more a set and forget DE, I prefer its tools like Gnome-disks is a lot better for me than KDE partition manager.

I find the tiling better on Gnome through Forge as opposed to Bismuth on KDE.

There are extensions for pretty much anything in KDE like Krunner, Arc menu has something similar to K runner. Just Perfection would handle a lot of toolbar functionality that Gnome tweaks doesn’t. Though I would say the extensions aren’t as robust as KDE’s.

I don’t really use KDE, and if I forgot some really crucial information thanks to correct me.
You can use the KDE spin version of Fedora with plasma 6, or if you love the rolling release of Arch you can try openSUSE Tumbleweed with KDE (you choose you desktop environment at installation).

And for what you going to loose if you go to GNOME :

• HDR (you can enable HDR experimental on mutter but not working for me).
• VRR (it’s experimental on GNOME and work for me).
• You need extensions to customize your desktop, its not really a problem but some people don’t want to many extensions (like me).
• Customization in KDE that you don’t find in gnome, even in extensions.
• For Krunner you can use meta button to open gnome overview and start typing to find app.

And if you want to try GNOME try to stay the most “vanilla” possible. Some extensions I use :

• Blur my Shell
• Just Perfection
• Rounded Window Corners (need to do some search for each gnome release to find the new version)

I’ve bounced between both over the last 20 years. The main difference between Gnome and KDE is that KDE has always been far more customizable. Gnome has better support for Wayland over KDE 5, however that is not true for KDE 6. I’m not sure which is default currently for the Fedora KDE spin.

My personal take on the current Gnome DE is that it is a very different way of conceptualizing the desktop from what I’m used to, to the point that it puts me off. I had the same issue with the Unity DE on Ubuntu back when. While it’s not for me, a lot of folks do seem to like it. I’ts quite usable, but I wind up spending time fafing around trying to figure out how to get things done rather then just doing what it is I’m trying to do. Muscle memory runs deep and KDE keeps to the traditional Windows desktop feel (Win95 - Win 7) with a few nice upgrades. Gnome ( at least current Gnome) does it their own way.

What is painful about using KDE in Arch? Fedora supports KDE as well, just look up “Fedora KDE Respin” it’s just not the default DE.

Any Linux distro that you choose will almost always support any DE that you choose, the difference between distros isn’t that much anymore.

The only thing i missed was some KDE apps since they look butt ugly on gnome so you have to find alternatives. Krita comes to mind.

You don’t have Krunner, but when you press meta/start button, you get a text field in the overview that works similar. I used krunner only to start the apps and gnome overview gave me exactly the same functionality. So the thing that changed is keyboard shortcut: instead alt-f2, you would use meta/start and just start typing.

Just try it out and see if there is something you miss.

If you do switch, try to use it as meant by gnome ux, do not force it to be something it is not. This is what I did initially and after suffering for a while (I missed the start menu so used extensions etc) I dropped all extensions and tried to use it vanilla. After a month or two, workflow really stuck and I prefer it to windows and kde. Simplicity of it works for me since I don’t use it for anything but starting other apps: browser, terminal, files, vscode… Also, when you add apps to dock, you can start them with alt-number (this works in kde and windows as well), so even the dock I find irrelevant.

You also get something more in functionality, apps and stability (not that you only lose stuff moving off kde). E.g. accessing Samba shares with smb:// works well in gnome, where you can open movies from the share directly. While you can open the share in dolphin, you cannot open the movie directly from the remote location, you need to copy it first. (At least my experience before plasma 6, maybe it changed…). Another example is gnome boxes for VMs which is great.

Edit: one thing I do miss - systray.

No, KDE is just as well supported on Fedora, dont worry. I use it daily.

I also highly recommend using Fedora Kinoite from https://ublue.it

It is way more reliable, you cannot imagine how much. It is the best distribution model in my experience, you never have to worry about updates breaking anything, and you can always go back to vanilla.