LOL. Have we used the same GNOME? Their evolution is nothing but removing features and maximizing useless padding.
The entire family of touch friendly interfaces on non touch systems can fall into a black hole, and the world would be better for it.
There's really no reason for this inflammatory response and starting a flame war
Obviously, others disagree with you. The world would not be better if everyone conformed to your view of what a UI should be
And it was released 10 years ago... perhaps it's time to move on from old grudges
I'll be happy to move on from my grudge over their promulgating Gnome3 at the expense of Gnome2 when they stop promulgating Gnome3 and resume support of Gnome2.
None of that was true when I last used i3. YMMV.
In all those past decades of Desktop Env evolution, one thing I learned to appreciate is no need to be aware of the actual kind of Environment. Ideal DE should just be transparent to user, just as the underlying OS.
We interact with tools, the environment just lets us find them and helps us organize our stuff.
I get aware of the DE when it somehow gets in my way. For example, I remember from Ubuntu 18 in Gnome Terminal context menu two entries shared the same hot-key (_Preferences and _Paste in this order). Or in File manager, there was no direct way to enter full path. Or in Save As dialog the file name would loose its highlight after switching back from selecting the destination folder.
Sure, other DEs have their share of annoyance, but generally I think that transparency will be upon us... soon.
It offers a nicely setup i3 tiling WM, without having to do any configuration, and things like external displays, bluetooth and so on working out of the box, since it relies on various pieces of GNOME to do that.
Installing vanilla GNOME over Arch gave me a new outlook of it, Other comments about it's padding and non-Linux like UI approach might be valid but I'm sure that will enable someone from macOS feel at home as I've used that for a decade as well.