I’m now using GNOME as my Desktop Environment, and I’m pretty happy with it.. Though I’m seeing more and more people (and Valve) that are using KDE nowadays.
My question is, which Desktop Environment are you using and what benefits does it give you gaming-wise.
The main reason I’m using GNOME is not performance related, it is due to uniformity as I’m using only GTK4 Adwaita theme apps, and my only non-GNOME Apps are Firefox with GNOME Theme and Steam with GNOME Theme.
I was using Gnome and I still really like Gnome because it’s just a nice full DE experience while having a similar workflow to that of a tiling window-manager. I switched to Hyprland because I had used it before and didn’t really like met setup then, I wanted to give it one more try and went to look for some new tools I could use to get a setup I’m happy with and that works well for me without me having to put too much time and effort into it. So far so good and I’m still on Hyprland.
I use KDE because it is just way better! (and scaling is better as well) no wonder Valve chosed KDE.
Gnome is just a mess design wise no logic in anything.
And if you are used to Windows then KDE is definitely best! Anybody that says anything else is full of shit, like “oh you want an experience like Windows? Use Gnome” yeah No!
More interesting info here:
TLDR:
“KDE Plasma dominates Arch Linux installations by a wide margin. The latest pkgstats results place the KDE Plasma desktop at 38.36%, nearly doubling the share of GNOME, which sits at 19.84%. This gap has widened steadily over the past three years, marking Plasma’s strongest position in the dataset’s history.
KDE Plasma dominates Arch Linux Installations.
In contrast, GNOME has been on a gradual decline since its peak around 2016–2018, when it consistently held above 30%. Today’s figures show that momentum has decisively shifted toward KDE’s increasingly polished, performant, and feature-rich environment.“
I use currently Gnome, although I like Plasma. One of the reasons for switching during my fresh install was that I easily spent too much time messing with themes and widgets and and… You get the picture. 
Also I have 14" laptop, so Gnome is handy with it’s workspace layout. I have to agree however that switching from Windows, Gnome can be… Odd. However, it’s quite easy to get in after first shock. 
And I like that it feels more, what should be the word, complete for me than Plasma, because unified look. On gaming, I have noticed no difference. Only gripe I have is that ROG Control Center’s indicator appears only on the first time it’s launched (I use AppIndicator extensions) but on reboot disappears. It works like it should however, indicator simply doesn’t show.
I’m with Gnome, easy to use, not much config needed. I have no stability issues. I’ve got a 4K display, 28”, scaling 166% fits my needs. Not much customisation.
Don’t need the ENDLESS configuration of KDE that in fact at least for me makes no sense at all.
But I don’t think it really matters, use what u like, and be happy with YOURE choice 
I like Gnome much but it doesn’t offer a good clipboard manager and screenshot utility out of the box. There are CopyQ and Flameshot (both great) but I had permission problems (more than a single time) because of Gnome’s way to make it difficult to use such tools.
Therefore, I switched to KDE some time ago.
well said !! best post of the day..
sadly linux/world is full Fanaticism. choice is the beauty/wonder of linux + life
It doesn’t matter, use the desktop environment you like best, you’re not gonna see a meaningful difference in gaming performance.
There might be some meaningful difference between X and Wayland, but it will be so miniscule it doesn’t practically matter.
Imo uniformity is not really a good reason to use a desktop environment, you should be using the desktop environment, the desktop environment shouldn’t be using you or dictating how you use your pc and what you install. I know it’s not really doing that, that it’s all you yourself doing it to yourself, but still….
If there’s an app I like I don’t really care if it’s Qt or Gtk or whtaever else, and I don’t understand why people get hung up on that, so what if they have to install a few extra libraries? That doesn’t harm them unless their hard drive space is measured in megabytes.
Some people are proud of how few packages they have installed and anything that raises that number is to be despised. Personally, I think that’s a meaningless metric.
Amen to that!
Also, I couldn’t bother less with what is leading what statistics, beauty pageants and what not.
I think desktop environments all function in a similar way for gaming, or at least between KDE and Gnome.
I personally use KDE Plasma, I have test tried Gnome but wasn’t what I liked, it does look nice in some aspects and fairly consistent design but it’s workflow wasn’t my preference, but that’s fine. In the end the reason there are many desktop environments available is so there is something for everyone, and a single DE may not to cater to everyone, I may not like to use Gnome, but it will be there for someone else, or in other words use what you like as this is why the choice is available, and a benefit of Linux. If it’s any use Linus Torvalds uses Gnome so there is that, he doesn’t play many games though as far as I know.
In terms of performance I thought they pretty much all function the same for gaming, some other DE’s are very light and small but once you run a game it probably won’t make too much differences. If there are other specific features and benefits to Plasma or Gnome when it comes to playing games then that is a different thing, but performance wise if referring to frames or hardware utilisation they shouldn’t be too different currently.
One should take into account that Wine/Proton and such aren’t optimized for Wayland. At least Proton-GE still uses X11/Xwayland per default. Native wayland support has been added to Proton-GE only due to frequent requests from the community just a few months ago. And it’s not the main objective of valve and or glorious eggroll to develop the wine wayland driver. That is an independent project not directly related to valves vanilla Proton or Proton-GE from Glorious Eggroll.
That being said, native wayland support is available, but your mileage may vary and certain titles may not work that well. Thus, one might be better off with the compatibility layer provided via X11/Xwayland.
To me, I can’t really tell if titles would run better using X11… as I’m on KDE Plasma and I’m not a 24/7 gamer. Some argue that with a more light-weight desktop environment than KDE Plasma you wouldn’t have a performance penalty.
In the end, one should understand that the Steam Deck and SteamOS may use KDE Plasma. But in essence, that’s irrelevant and it is a misconception that KDE Plasma would be the better DE for gaming therefore. Their choice of DE has nothing to do with the way Proton works technically. In a nutshell, Proton does translate Direct3D instruction to Vulkan, either DXVK for Direct3D 9,10 & 11. And VKD3D-Proton for Direct3D 12.
Simply said, in terms of legacy software / older gaming titles, X11 is still the most common denominator. And the compatibility layer of Xwayland doesn’t really represent a significant performance penalty, at least for AMD and Intel graphics cards. Only NVidia proprietary GPU drivers lacked Wayland support initially, when Wayland was relatively new. But with the latest drivers, this shouldn’t really be an issue anymore.
i’ve settled on window managers only (currently running Sway) as it matches my simplified, no-distractions workflow. I don’t need or want the things that full desktop environments bring to the party – dancing icons, dynamically generated gradients, or anime catgirls as window backgrounds.
My games run fine on my system, no resource constraints, so I’m content with a WM.
But that’s the beauty of Linux! Your system, your way, and there’s room for everyone at the table.
Between KDE and Gnome I don’t think you are going to see a meaningful difference in performance for gaming.
At least for the next year or so, KDE will still have access to X11 for any games that run better on X.
That being said, I don’t think I would let gaming drive my DE choice. Use whichever you prefer.
First of all, thank you for participating on my thread!
I am not a hardcore gamer, I just wanted an input as to why so many gamers convert to KDE, but I suppose I doesn’t have to so anything with improved gaming performance..
I would like to point out, that yes I like my system “unbloated” by libraries etc (maybe a muscle memory from my Windows 2000 years) and I am a sucker for uniformity and looks…
Concluding, I understand that KDE is not gaming superior over GNOME or other DEs, it’s just user’s choice!
Once more thank you all!
Plasma all the way.
Yeah HDR actually works…. Mostly…
KDE is just Simply The Best!
Sorry to break the bad news to you but GNOME is by far the BESTEST 
It is, believe it or not, and…
