I used to hate android emulators, since the ones I’d tested on Windows were ad-ridden, slow bloatware.
The other day I needed to run an android app on Fedora 40.
I tried Waydroid and it worked very well. The app ran supersmooth as if it was running natively.
Also the cli syntax was very sane an user friendly.
waydroid app install|run|list …
So if you need an Android app on linux the experience might be better than what you think it would be.
Couldn’t you just drop a task manager plasmoid on the desktop instead of the task bar in KDE?
TBH, I’ve avoided KDE (and GNOME) because the big environments seem to be “if you want one bit, it doesn’t really play well with anything else.” Also a bit of elitism-- full desktops are for noobs who haven’t spent 20 years ossifying their taste.
The general buzz seems to be that KDE’s compositor is one of the richer choices.