Think I’ll try Cinnamon desktop.
Gambas3 I was just playing with, to see. I don’t have any diagnostics yet. Its icon appears in the usual places, but there is no sign of it starting in the GUI.
All I can add to the problem with kate is that I’ve installed it and removed it via dnfdragora and also via the “Software” app trying to fix things. Each time I used it fine, dragged its icon onto the menu bar (the one I get from the “Windows” key or “Activities”) . After updates and a reboot (or sometimes before) it’s gone from the menu bar and from the list when I click “Show Apps” at the end.
I can still start kate from the CLI, but it’s clunky and I lose focus on what I’m doing if I have to go looking for an editor that was there 5 minutes ago.
I tried uninstalling, renaming its .desktop file, and then reinstalling. That brought it back to the menu bar, until I closed kate and then it was hiding again. A bit messy 
Roops