I installed Debian + KDE on my mom’s laptop. She hasn’t had a complaint since. How tech-savvy is she, you ask? I’m sitting with her right now, so out of politeness she put on headphones to watch her favorite soap opera. Mind you, the headphones weren’t plugged into the laptop. She was sitting there, headphones on her head, sound coming through the speakers, watching her soaps like this is how it’s meant to be done.
Cinnamon is the only other desktop environment that I can really use besides KDE. To me they’re equal in quality. Cinnamon does some things better than KDE, KDE does some things better than Cinnamon. It varies based on how each one is configured in your distro’s repository more than anything. KDE on Arch is top notch. Cinnamon on Arch is hot garbage. Cinnamon on Ubuntu is usually really good, KDE on Ubuntu was barely usable last time I tried it.
If you know a lot about desktop environments you could fix either one yourself but I only use them based on which one works better after I download it and configure basic settings.
