I think Gnome is great. The workflow is amazing imo, better than a clunky Windows-inspired UX, and it’s nice to have a distro I can depend on being bug free without it being a project that moves too slowly.
And those trackpad gestures. Man. They make even Apple’s trackpad gestures feel like you’re using a £300 Acer laptop.
It’s also nice to have a desktop that actually gives a shit about UX and consistency. It’s nice to have a desktop that encourages great third party apps that integrate well with the system and follow excellent design guidelines. It’s nice to have a DE that are ballsy enough to go against the Win95 UX paradigm and does its own thing.
Just because it’s not your cup of tea doesn’t mean it’s a dumpster fire or they hate their users and are doing a circlejerk.
That elitist, tribal mentality is one of the most exasperating things about the Linux community, and is, ironically, a circlejerk of its own.