kde without a doubt. I tried so many times to get into gnome,even using fedora and always failed after a couple of days and went back to plasma.
I just accepted it in the end and stopped even caring that gnome exists. Competition is good though and I do hope gnome keeps going.
but are they really? how about distros without systemd what would you call those OpenRC/Linux? systemd is indeed a giant intricate project,which is why some people don’t like it or are against it,but all its components are working alongside the Linux kernel, without which there wouldn’t be a need for system. I would say it’s rather Linux with systemd,as systemd is optional.
edit: useless autocorrect