Honestly that's one of the thing where Linux is truly behind other os. Design really need someone to step up, gnome choices are really debatable, kde is great but c'mon.. it's not for beginners or people who just want things to work.
I found that Linux mint desktop environment is the best of both world, zorin a bit behind then everything else.
there is actually nothing complex or hard to understand about KDE. You can navigate your way around as you would with any other piece of software you're new to.
My 8 and 11 year old both use KDE. About 10 minutes and they figured out enough to start a browser and mod Minecraft.
I think the people who have the hardest time are those who think they know what they’re doing so feel they need to change things.
I’ve never seen a beginner at anything start digging through settings wildly, and experienced people know what they want to change. It’s that middle ground.
maybe i'm less smart that your 8 years old, i remember i wanted to switch the bottom bar to the left and the overlay was so cumbersome... i tried a few things and ended up breaking the layout.
I tried KDE Plasma 6.5 on my gaming rig recently and found it quite intuitive. It retains most of the usual keyboard shortcuts and expected behaviors. Granted I'm a "power user" unafraid of dialogs and errors, but I bet my parents could figure it out.
I found that Linux mint desktop environment is the best of both world, zorin a bit behind then everything else.