It’s not forked from Gnome but KDE tends to stay out of your way pretty easily and supports just as much as Gnome (with some Wayland caveats) if not more. In fact KDE community is very responsive and if you participate you will likely experience and benefit from the momentum they have.
I wish I could get any Linux on my Surface Pro 3. That thing heats up to 60c within 5 minutes of turning it on, and then randomly freezes. This is how I learned about the awesome feature Wayland has where you can't reload your session like you can in x11...