Yeah, KDE was rough in the early days thanks to QT. But things slowly worked themselves out. While I don’t change much with KDE, I do change a few minor things, mostly I make sure the capslock is off and single click to open is on and I got to have that 3D box to switch my desktops. But I do like the power of easy choice KDE offers.
Still I do get nostalgic for the old Gnome2 days. So I have Cinnamon DE installed on a low powered mini desktop. And it runs amazingly well.
I can’t ever remember a Gnome 3 install that ran slow for me. But I can always feel a heaviness to Gnome3 that bothers me. It’s like an unseen presence that feels like something is wrong.