You’re sounding like one of those people that says “ummm ackshully it’s GNU + Linux, not Linux”

No, I'm one of those people that understand that a DE is not the OS. A DE is a component one can install, but doesn't have to, in order to have a fully functional OS. Most certainly one does not require Kate in order to have a Linux OS installed. I have thousands of linux machines I manage that DON'T have Kate installed.

If you install a distro with KDE, you will have Kate. It’s an OS program.

Weird, because I only have Kate because I asked for it to get installed. It didn't come along for the ride when I installed KDE.

Pahahaha, that’s not what defines whether a program is an OS one or not. You can run paint on Linux if you wanted to. Based on your definition, Paint therefore isn’t part of the Windows app suite.

Paint comes on the MS Windows ISO (Or did), and with zero choice given, ever, MS Paint gets installed.

I installed MX Linux yesterday, and Kate was not installed.

I installed KDE on Freebsd a couple of weeks ago, and Kate was not installed.

Let’s get back on topic - do you think a normal user will hear “Kate” and think “ah, that must be the text editor!”, do you think they’ll hear “Dolphin” and think “ah, that must be a file manager of some kind!”?

I don't think any of that matters, tbh. Every user will have things to learn, once they switch to a new OS.