Plasma got so bad over the years that when I switched to Linux over a year ago (switched september 2024, over a year before Win10 EOL) I didn't feel any different. Apps still took a minute or so to open, the entire desktop was laggy AF, the mouse cursor itself kept freezing (literally the same thing I experienced on Windows on the same machine), and yes, it happened both on Wayland and X11, so I can't even blame Wayland for that one. And the time it takes from the login screen to the functional desktop is enormous.
Trinity (and pretty much all other DEs, maybe except GNOME which is trash anyway so it's okay) on the other hand is lightning fast and very functional. I don't even know where KDE did go so wrong, because I remember using KDE4 in ~2010-2014 (when I used Linux last time) and it was fast and functional, even with all graphical additions, animations, etc. and plasma desktop with plenty of plasmoids, on much weaker hardware (Geforce 9600, yes, it was before GTX was a thing, Core2Quad Q9450, 4GB RAM).
Plasma has basically two speed settings: Fast (right after installation, don't touch anything and not customize a thing) and laggy AF after even the slightest bit of customization. TDE has much more reasonable resource requirements.