I love gnome but too used to kde to switch.

Generally Plasma. I really like the look of Libadwaita applications, but the GNOME desktop is very much a "do it our way, or take a hike" - and some of the interactions that I've seen in the past between the GNOME group and others... well, lets just say whenever I see drama in the Linux community as of recently its always been either with GNOME or Wayland. That doesn't necessarily instill a lot of confidence in me using either of those.

For VMs I use IceWM. I like MATE (Gnome 2.0 feel) for daily driving.

Gnome, but only with dash-to-panel. Otherwise XFCE.

I have used xfce and cinnamon without any problems, I think I like xfce a little more.

GNOME 2. I tried 3 for a year or two and the task bar crashes or lack the very basic feature of swapping window position. It's an external plugin so I don't expect it to be fixed in any year soon. Then I realize GNOME 2 was perfect before they ruined it in 3 so now I've been on MATE desktop for 4 years now. I think the new team is too small to catch up on any modern changes (webp support is lacking, and no wayland) and nothing I could do can fix that (minor development work on build system, donation) but I'd still accept a perfect 2010 era desktop over 2023 desktop that doesn't feel right after a decade of development.

Gnome, sometimes XFCE on older hardware.

Blorp

@governorkeagan gnome, comes cause it doesnt look like windows

Cinnamon at the moment because I'm running LMDE 6. After that it would be gnome however it does have a higher RAM usage. I find Gnome based DE's easier to read and understand.

Whereas KDE just confuses me with its illegible font, awful icons (especially in Libre Office) and the nonsensical horizontal blue lines in some settings.