Linux

I've been using Fedora KDE for...months? Maybe a year now? And I've yet to see it hang or crash.

Plasma 6 started very prone to crashes in my laptop when it released. I like how it works a lot more than Gnome, but Plasma tends to be buggier for me too.

This last month I've been having rendering issues in a lot of software, like Firefox and Okular in Fedora 41 (and now 42). I don't know where they came from as it was pretty much perfect last month.

Sometimes I think I'd prefer to return to xfce in laptop (like I tend to use in desktops) or use labwc.

It has many preloaded features. You will use only a few of them.

Give Cinnamon/Budgie a shot, (I recommend in a vm and see which one you like)both are based on gnome(cinnamon personally its like a combination between gnome 3 ane xfce).
I have the same experience with kde personally(Like it crashes sometimes,looks dated,etc it didnt crash that badly for me), and I decided to desktop hop to Cinnamon.

Yes I have Nvidia

I use it daily and it occasionally may crap out, but it may happen maybe once every few weeks. Can't comment about GPU and the likes as I only have an Intel iGPU which works just fine.

Look at the reddit called "unixporn" and search for Xfce. You ll see what's possible with Xfce. For me the KDE crashes are a dealbreaker. My Xfce setup is so simplified, that nothing can be ugly. I use Bspwm for the windows and stripped down Xfce panel (dont touch third party status bars, such as polybar, its waste of time if you already have Xfce). No menu such as Whisker menu, but Rofi instead. I got Xfce stability without the old looking.

Well, before wayland I always used fluxbox (eventually with picom compositor, which previously was compton). Then now on wayland I'm using sway with fuzzel, yambar and others.

I've always felt both gnome and kde, as well as most other DEs really bloated. Gnome used to be more stable on wayland, and as of Today with better support for nvidia AFAIK, but KDE is quickly catching up.

Not sure why the hate on gnome (and I guess on GTK as well). It doesn't offer all the customization by default, but you can get it through extensions while available. But on KDE one really needs to see a pletora of dependencies each time one adds a simple module or application. Both are improving gradually to become less intense on resources being KDE more advanced on that.

But hey, both are bloated compared to non full DE compositors such as sway or labwc. BTW I use sway with tabbed mode (not actually tiling) and some tweaks, and I prefer that over stacking compositors, but if wanting one labwc is pretty cool.

On X11 there's a huge amount of window managers plus compositors plus several other applications which altogether can give a similar sense to a DE but way less intense on resources, and for sure way less bloated. To me DEs are overrated to answer your title, but perhaps that's just me, :)

I have non of the issue on my Starlite (Kubuntu)

My PC with the newest Arch Linux seems to have sometimes issues with sleep and freezing on waking up. (Intel CPU + AMD GPU)

I’ve been using it on two older systems (4-8 y) one without a ssd or graphics card and it works flawlessly. As others suggested maybe you check your graphics drivers. I used to have problem with kde some time ago but since coming back it’s been nothing but smooth sailing.

I don't like it, too much desk space wasted on useless crapola. I use Mate, a nice clean desktop with a simple pull-down menu leaving the majority of the space free for work.