On my computer (on which i'm not even using KDE as my DE, i use plain Xorg with Window Maker - and the system isn't even a high end one, it is a cheap PC i bought 5-6 years ago) Krita and GIMP start up pretty much the same time, which is around a second.
> the UI looks non-native with fonts that aren't the same as the rest of my system
Non-native compared to what? GIMP is only "native" on GNOME (though with it still being on Gtk2 it may feel off even on GNOME) and like any non-GNOME app, Krita would obviously not look "native" to it. But this is the case on pretty much most desktop applications these days on pretty much any desktop OS, the only OS where you may get some semblance of uniformity is macOS (but that comes with its own can of worms).
> spinning up some mcop's, dcop's, more cops
The last time KDE had such things were in KDE3, the last version of which was released 15 years ago.
With a reasonable amount of effort you can get Qt apps to look good on GNOME. The same often can't be said about GNOME apps on KDE due to recent pushes of libadwaita, among other things, which greatly hinder the ability for a user to apply system themes.
On my computer (on which i'm not even using KDE as my DE, i use plain Xorg with Window Maker - and the system isn't even a high end one, it is a cheap PC i bought 5-6 years ago) Krita and GIMP start up pretty much the same time, which is around a second.
> the UI looks non-native with fonts that aren't the same as the rest of my system
Non-native compared to what? GIMP is only "native" on GNOME (though with it still being on Gtk2 it may feel off even on GNOME) and like any non-GNOME app, Krita would obviously not look "native" to it. But this is the case on pretty much most desktop applications these days on pretty much any desktop OS, the only OS where you may get some semblance of uniformity is macOS (but that comes with its own can of worms).
> spinning up some mcop's, dcop's, more cops
The last time KDE had such things were in KDE3, the last version of which was released 15 years ago.