Is it just me or fonts really look better on GNOME and other (gtk DEs)? With the same font smoothing/anti-aliasing settings, text in GNOME is smoother and more similar to MacOS fonts.
A good example is Cantrell font. It looks way better in GNOME than in KDE.
The backend should be the same (Freetype)… only difference I can think of is that GNOME uses Wayland by default while KDE defaults to X11 and offers Wayland as an option. Do you have a HiDPI screen?
I use X11 on both DEs with an Apple Cinema Display 27".
I use X11 on both DEs with an Apple Cinema Display 27".