Sur phoronix ca balance grave.

KDE contributor here. My post here is personal, does not represent the KDE community or my employer, etc...

I personally think Canonical probably made the right decision.

Gnome is a simpler experience. The primary goal of Ubuntu Desktop is to make computing easy, and Gnome is generally harder to screw up. I hate the workflow, other environments do it better, but once the basics are understood there's not too many intimidating things going on, and Gnome is a generally healthy project at the core of GTK with less chance of significant issues.

Gnome is generally doing a good job providing a suite of applications which I think users would enjoy. Weather, Maps, Calculators, Photos, simple stuff. It's all there. All those apps are simple. They do not require users reconfigure the desktop, or lock/unlock things. With KDE applications we often have more capable offerings, but precious few of our apps can really be called suitable for beginners.

It has fewer apparent bugs. Maybe this is 40% me only using Gnome on HTPCs so I simply don't encounter them, but the simplicity of the system certainly puts a ceiling on their issues. Gnome is also focused on polishing their apps, so the bugs they do have aren't going to be as apparent.

Now... I'll also catch-22 this whole "things are less buggy" moment and say what's on my mind every day; GTK today simply plays poorly with most non-Gnome environments, to an extent they are directly responsible for crippling other DEs when it comes to the use of GTK applications. I only say Gnome is more suitable because the developers to an extent (in my very personal opinion not to be construed as fact) have used anticompetitive practices. Outside of Gnome and Pantheon the menus are broken, CSDs are broken, often the styling is broken... They have systematically broken desktop compatibility on several levels, and some of the developers in the camp stated outright they really couldn't care less and even rejected patches which fix things.

So, while Plasma as a desktop is better, there's a word to be said for keeping the same applications. If core Gnome apps were reliable on Plasma I'd recommend full-stop to use Plasma as the environment and Gnome applications for user familiarity. I wouldn't recommend to Ubuntu that they switch to KDE applications, because it would catch users off-guard. But, you simply cannot rely on GTK applications in Plasma because of the mess they cause, so... y'know... EEE. :/

...

Now, me, personally as an experienced user? I wouldn't use Gnome on my daily desktop if they paid me to do it. But here's the thing; I look at Ubuntu as the "gateway drug" of Linux, where users get a taste of a simple and competent system, then branch out to greener pastures when they are comfortable. If Ubuntu uses Gnome, that's fine, because I think in the long run Gnome is a fantastic gateway into Linux too - it's where I started - and some will stick with it, others will migrate. To me, it really doesn't change much, Canonical is offloading an unnecessary burden and sticking pretty close to their family of applications.