KDE3 languished and lost a lot of users because they were so focused on the KDE4 migration. Then KDE4 came out and it was resource heavy and "overly aesthetic" so even more people jumped ship.
Meanwhile, GNOME did the exact same with GNOME3 even harder, but people had in their mind that the community would fix it or that KDE just had to be worse.
KDE kept trucking along; optimizing things, cleaning up and addressing complaints, not ballooning resource usage, etc. So now they're the refined and lighter option, while GNOME is overly opinionated and resource hungry. The only complaint I hear from non-user's today is that it feels old/last gen. But that's the appeal to me, I don't want "new gen" if it means touch oriented interfaces and dictated themes with overly simplistic applications.
Meanwhile, GNOME did the exact same with GNOME3 even harder, but people had in their mind that the community would fix it or that KDE just had to be worse.
KDE kept trucking along; optimizing things, cleaning up and addressing complaints, not ballooning resource usage, etc. So now they're the refined and lighter option, while GNOME is overly opinionated and resource hungry. The only complaint I hear from non-user's today is that it feels old/last gen. But that's the appeal to me, I don't want "new gen" if it means touch oriented interfaces and dictated themes with overly simplistic applications.