> Plasma/KDE was also very windows-like, so I don’t buy the argument that Microsoft was the cause, it was mostly gnome devs thinking that they could get a radical touch-first redesign in before anyone else.

The article does touch on that, apparently Suse signed a patent deal with MS which sidestepped the issues so they could continue the design as usual. Gnome and Redhat refused.

If this is true it kinda reinforces my feeling that Gnome 3 was a redesign for the sake of it. I hate almost everything about it though I'm not married to the windows concept. But everything about it just feels wrong. The huge "touch-friendly" title bars, the menus hidden in hamburger buttons, the lack of configuration options like macOS. And I really tried to like it. When I moved back to FOSS from Mac it was my first choice.

I love KDE though only recently, I thought KDE 3 was too cluttery. It feels like it only came into its own right with Plasma. And I don't find it all that Windows-like though the taskbar certainly is more Windows-like than other DE's. But a taskbar doth not a windows make. Overall I find it distinctly different from Windows. The control panel is definitely a lot better than that mashup of different styles in Windows.