Yes. Linux on desktop is by design modulable, you grab parts from plenty of different packages and put them together to make a distribution. Gnome and KDE are just packages, large ones with plenty of dependencies to be sure, but just packages. Here’s the gnome package on arch, do you see any driver?
Literally never heard of it before. Please don’t recommend tiny distributions to new users, they’re a pain to debug due to the lack of information, and they typically have much less support.
drivers for software
That’s not a thing.
theme brings drivers
Gnome and kde don’t bring drivers, they bring a compositor. The drivers come from LINUX and other packages like MESA which are distro agnostic.
only working on Windows
OS compatibility is in the hands of the engineers and developers, or more accurately in the hands of corporations that will go where there’s money. If you want shit to work on linux, you need to use linux.
They can’t be too heavy handed, otherwise they’ll end up with another IE lawsuit that fucked them over. Instead what you have is windows slowly creeping up the enshittification, slowly pushing the boundaries of what they’re allowed to do, and doing so regionally too, with the EU getting less shit shoveled in.
There’s some distributions that are windows-like, if you want that you can try Linux Mint. But some DEs like Gnome approach desktop use very differently and do away with plenty of windows designs.
Windows at this point is barely an OS anymore, it’s freemium, it exists solely to push ads and their other products. You say it yourself, most people just use the browser, but hey today windows wants you to use edge, onedrive, outlook, the office suite… and they’re taking every step to make sure you do. Their unique goal is to lock you into their ecosystem and make more money off you.
It’s just a “I disagree” button for most ppl. Also windows do be that bad, you’ve used it so long you don’t notice or know any better.
Matrix is only a protocol. Take a look at its implementations.
But yeah, none of these are discord.