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There is, but it's worse. Especially since GNOME 3. I know you can use MATE or Cinnamon, but it's not the default on any of the major platforms.

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They technically have defaults, but when the difference for most distributions (e.g. Debian) is just checking a different box in the installer, it seems like a silly thing to complain about.

I think there's an assumption that the default DE gets more attention from the distro; it's more polished, and "just works" (or at least, something approaching the concept on Linux).

e.g. from what I remember, when installing xfce in debian, you get the ugly barebones defaults from upstream. Compare this to Xubuntu...

https://ubuntu-mate.org

KDE is really good right now. I'd highly recommend it. Something like KDE Neon or OpenSuse are both really solid OS experiences right now.

I made the switch from Windows 10 to Manjaro w/KDE about 2 months ago. Took about a week of ironing out some things and forcing myself to stick it out, but now I love it. I will also vouch for KDE being really good right now.

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