KDE was always niche before, but my understanding is that Plasma5 is all the rage now, and more distros are defaulting to Plasma.

As someone who still remembers when Plasma4 was announced it feels really nice to see just how little KDE has changed over the past two decades - all changes are pretty much optimizations and stability fixes. Goes to show how well-thought-out the vision for Plasma was from the start.

Nothing wrong with Gnome, it’s very good in my book. It’s simple so you can recommend it to a non-tech friend (who does not expect things to look like Windows). Yet it’s powerful enough so you can use it as a power user quite efficiently. KDE is just much more options, if you need them. Not everyone needs, so I think both are welcome to advance and be actively developed.

I'm in the same boat, I think Gnome being the default in some distros is mostly because of historical reasons, perhaps similar to how Ubuntu used be good

I don't use gnome or KDE, I use i3 or sway and then I install a file manager and then I use drun or a drun like program to launch applications

no kde bloat, no gnome bloat, a desktop with a status bar (no desktop icons) and that's it

Iirc, gnome also got a million from the Sovereign Tech Fund a while back (I think it was them + that amount of money, don't quote me on this).

Imo: both are good and deserve it. They sometimes have different ways of thinking and goals, but both are usible for everyone - even for non-techies.

While I'm a gnome fanboy, it's really cool to see financial support for good desktops!