I used Gnome for a very long time, switched to KDE and switched back. Recently I decided to retry KDE after hearing good things about Plasma, and I can say that it wasn't hyperbole. The desktop feels light and snappy, the settings have been cleaned up and organized while retaining the flexibility/configurability. It may not be as "clean" as Gnome out of the box, but it can be customized a whole lot more to how you want your desktop to be.