[lunar_rover]

KDE 5 wasn't much better than GNOME 3, it's the main reason behind GNOME default I think. It's only til KDE 6 they got back up on their feet and solved the most egregious design issues, many more still linger.

GNOME/Red Hat for a long time is the only one even trying to figure out a solution for some of the longstanding issues like application distribution and sandboxing. Those rant articles about GNOME unfortunately went nowhere since the other desktops were all stuck. KDE Discover eventually supported Flatpak which was advocated by GNOME for years, SteamOS using Flatpak ended up being the decisive push.

GNOME having better enterprise support can be another factor.

[cromka]

I find Gnome way more visually appealing as well. Saying this as a KDE developer, too.