Plasma is rock solid. Yes, you can break it. And that is called freedom.
If you don't install 30 third party widgets and themes, you'll be FINE, while still being able to make it yours.
That is why I always choose KDE Plasma (we'll see when Cosmic comes).
Encountering sleep/black screen bug is not freedom. The average linux user is shifting, its not longer being used only by teens/tech savvy. People want to get things done.
I was not satisfied with Plasma because I would have different window styles etc. With Plasma 6 I removed all themes and all the shit and customized it with builtin features only. It looks so nice and clean and just works like a charm.
Plasma needs stability
Yeah, let's not mention Gnome breaking every peace of itself every update, along with abandoning APIs and hating QT apps. How can I use a DE, if I can almost certainly be sure that half of my extensions won't work after another update? Or that all of my QT apps will look weird (if they'll work at all)?
And I don't hate Gnome. It's cool and stuff, but you can't call it stable, 'cause KDE/XFCE/LXDE/[insert DE name here] will be far more stable than Gnome.If you rely on extensions when you use GNOME, that’s on you. Vanilla gnome is perfectly fine by itself if you understand the workflow. I only really want, not need, one extension and that’s pano the clipboard manager. Anything else is just extra.
Plasma has been pretty stable for the last several years I've been using it, especially X11. Wayland is buggier, but not terribly so, and it gets better all the time.
I've switched over to Wayland with Plasma now because it is stable enough for me now, I'm on Nobara.
I don't really use Gnome, so I can't speak to that experience.
If I were to vouch for a DE that is rock stable, it would be Cinnamon. I've never had any problems with Cinnamon. It's not super pretty, and it's a bit clunky, but if I want a DE that just works and gets out of my way, Cinnamon is my first choice.
It's what I use for my business laptop, LMDE with Cinnamon, rock solid.
I should also add that I've always used fully AMD hardware, CPU and GPUs, and never brand new. Always a year or two old, so the Linux kernel has time to address bleeding edge bugs and such.
I've been using KDE on Fedora for work for a few years now. Several system upgrades staeting from Fedora 36. Recently upgraded to plasma 6 and fedora 40. It is rock solid and very reliable.
And i do use alot of widgets, 3rd party apps, flatpaks, etc.
