I don’t really like most KDE apps.
KDE Neon is KDE + Plasma but it’s completely loaded with KDE apps which is why I use Kubuntu. The basic apps are KDE but they leave most of it up to you.
Plasma is da bomb. I could go way fancy with it but I keep it fairly basic. I don’t have wobbly windows turned on. It’s cool to play with for a few seconds but has no real use. I do use the Cube for virtual desktops. I also changed the keyboard shortcut to Alt+Ctrl and left/right arrow keys. I’m nt big on Alt+Tab these days because I don’t want to go through a stack of several apps. I’ve got six virtual desktops instead and might have 2-3 apps open on a couple of them that I will Alt+Tab through.
I’ve had a few different Ubuntu based distros on this laptop but Kubuntu is by far the fastest. Plasma was built to be lightweight and with mobile devices in mind. Plasma-mobile is a cell phone OS. I run dual boot with Win 7 Pro on the other side and my PC start up time is less than 30 seconds and shut down time is less than 5 seconds. This is a 7-8 year old Thinkpad though it does have decent specs.
2.70 GHz 8 core i7 intel and 16GiB of ram with SSD hard drive.
Kubuntu Plasma is every bit as fast as Xubuntu on this machine.
The great thing about Linux, though my experience is only with Ubuntu based, which Mint is, is that all you have to do is back up the Home folder to some external media or a partition and then install another flavor, restore the Home backup and reinstall all the apps you used. All your file and settings will be right back the way they were. Open a browser and you’ll have the same History, Bookmarks and even open Tabs.
I also like to keep it minimum, I hate bloatware. But, I love the total control that KDE gives (I don’t do the flashy stuff either ;)).
Have tried Neon, Manjaro, and Fedora... Neon was too artificial, Manjaro was on a different planet (Arch), and Fedora was unpredictable (lots of apps in beta testing/top of tech).
So, I went back to Kubuntu.
I have read that there is a 3rd RHL coming out that is more inline with more stable updates (than Fedora) and almost a mirror of RedHat. I may mess with it in the future, when it is proven more stable.