I've been a Linux user for a decade and a half now, but still use Windows on my corporate laptops. Honestly, it's baffling how Microsoft seem to consistently manage to miss the mark with the UI design. There's lots to be said about the underlying internals of Windows vs Linux, performance, kernel design etc., but even at the shallow, end user, "is this thing pleasant to use" stakes, they just never manage to get it right.

Windows 7 was...fine. It was largely inoffensive from a shell point of view, although things about how config and settings were handled were still pretty screwy. But Windows 8 was an absolutely insane approach to UI design, Windows 10 spent an awful lot of energy just trying to de-awful it without throwing the whole thing out, and Windows 11 is missing basic UI features that even Windows 7 had.

When you look at their main commercial competition (Mac and Chromebook) or the big names in Linux (GNOME, KDE, plenty of others besides), they stand out as a company that simply can't get it right, despite having more resources to throw at it than the rest of them put together.

Unlike Windows and MacOS, the Linux ecosystem is a lot more modular. For example, graphical user interfaces. There are a few types, ranging from ruthlessly simple tiling window managers to more complex desktop environments that more closely resemble the Windows or MacOS experience.

Linux users may take their pick between about a dozen desktop environments (DEs), including Gnome, Cinnamon, Mate, xfce and LXQT.

KDE (once standing for Kool Desktop Environment, now merely KDE) is a community/organization that produces open source software. They made Krita, a raster art program, KDENLIVE, a video editor, and many other such utilities. They also make the Plasma desktop environment, which is often referred to simply as "KDE" by distro maintainers. For example, you might download Fedora GNOME or Fedora KDE.

KDE Neon is an operating system maintained by KDE which features the Plasma desktop.