Comment Longtime aesthetic preference (Score 1) 818
I liked KDE when I first tried it in the late 90s, but never loved it. I've been living in Gnome since switching to Ubuntu in 2005 or 2006.
Whenever I try it after a hiatus, KDE always feels too visually busy. Little things seem to lack polish: the fonts, the stock clock app, things like that. The file manager is nice, but these days most file managers have a decent baseline level of functionality. (It's not the 90s anymore.) I also like some Gnome apps better: the system-monitor panel applet and terminal for example.
Unity and vanilla Gnome 3 are atrocious, but Gnome3 in the latest Ubuntu with the 'gnome-classic' session is basically Gnome2 with bug fixes. With two panels on the bottom (one with a window list, one with menus, app launchers, and widgets/panel applets) I have the familiarity of KDE (I can't stand the mac-style menubar-on-top layout) with the more-pleasing-to-me visuals of Gnome.