I currently have Gnome installed but have been having some issues. So I’m thinking I might try KDE Plasma to see if it fixes my problems.
But as someone new to Linux I’m unsure how to change DE’s. I’ve read that it’s not advisable to have two different DE’s installed at the same time. So I don’t really know what to do?
I’m hoping it’s possible to change without having to re-install my whole operating system and everything from scratch
It is far better that you do a fresh install and never run two DE’s on the same install. Some recommend just creating a secondary user for the other DE, but I strongly suggest the fresh install.
Yes, it’s technically possible to change your installation, but if you have to ask, you probably would be better off to just reinstall.
Otherwise, you’ll probably find all sorts of issues that will make you think the 2nd DE is broken.
Also, what might be of interest: What kind of issues do you have with Gnome? I’m running Gnome with Cachy right now without any troubles (knocks on wood).
Maybe we can give advice for your issues, based on your usecase. 
Well I can’t say for certain that they’re Gnome related. But for example you can find my biggest issue in my post here and looking at the pastebin you can see a lot of Dash To Dock errors which I’m thinking may be related to the issue
But also I have issues with launching steam. For example the first time I try to open it on each boot I get an error about steamwebhelper not responding. Then exiting steam and re-opening it works
I just took a look at your pastebin log in the other thread. It looks like everything is tied to your graphics adapter and the corresponding drivers in the system. Do you have a Nvidia or an AMD card in your setup? You could try to update/reinstall your driver packages, maybe there is something wrong on that end.
Also, installing the OS on an external USB C drive, even if it is NVME based, can cause general I/O timing issues with the system. Have you tried installing it on a mainboard-connected SATA/NVME drive?
Also, just as a snapshot, I’m using quite a few extension with Gnome, including Dash to Dock. I’m running my Cachy installation on a Beelink Mini-PC with a AMD Ryzen 7 8745HS/Radeon 780M Graphics adapter under Gnome/Wayland.
Hi, thanks for the reply. I am using an Nvidia 4070 Ti. Honestly not sure how to tell which driver version I’m on. But I think it’s one of the recent proprietary drivers if I had to guess.
The reason I installed it on an external enclosure is because both the slots on my motherboard are already populated. So I had to no where else to put it.
Hm, maybe one these can fix at least the USBC-NVME scenario for you:
Not very expensive, I would give it a try and work with the NVME drive this way to get the direct mainboard connection. And you can return it pretty quick if it doesn’t work. 
Also, you can try to switch to a X11 session with Gnome, instead of a Wayland session, which is the default when you login. You can switch easily in the login screen when you type in your password, you get a little gear icon in the lower right corner. Click on it and select something like “GNOME on X11”.
I suppose that is another option to try. Though I will say I disabled Dash to Dock last night and haven’t had any crashes/freezing today. Maybe just be a coincidence though.
I’ve also posted about this in the issues section of the Dash To Dock github but haven’t yet gotten a reply.
If you want an alternative to “Dash to Dock”, you can try the extension “Open Bar” instead. Many more options, more recent.
I take back what I said before about disabling dash to dock and it not crashing/freezing. It just crashed on me. Idk what the issue is at all
