I honestly don’t really see it, I think vanilla GNOME looks amazing, while KDE Plasma just screams Windows 7 to me.
Having said it that, both are great DE’s with vastly different approaches. So these can definitely just co exist, while we can both agree that both DE’s are great for different people and workflows.
Honestly my hope is still that the EU intervenes, which I consider to be around 50% given they’re a generally a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to regulations.
When Apple becomes my last hope, I’ll know times are bad. Having said that, it’s one of the parties that may actually oppose. The other big guy that may have some power in this, Microsoft, is probably more likely to adapt this catastrophe of an idea.
Flatpaks definitely do follow the system theme by default. I’m running Silverblue, so all my apps are Flatpaks.