Agreed. I find GNOME to be unusable junk from the functionality POV.

(I'll probably get challenged on this, so here's a shopping list:

• Give me back a componentised desktop, the O.M. in G.N.O.M.E.

• If I must have a top panel, make it useful. I want menus in there, and as many status icons as I wish, which is lots.

• I want 100% keyboard control. I want to unplug my mouse and have it totally usable, everything, no exceptions.

• And while we are at that, I want total 100% screen reader compatibility for my blind friends. That means TEXT. I want text menus, not hidden, right there. I want clear descriptions, everywhere, not jargon BS like "Activities".

• I want it accessible for me and everyone.)

... but GNOME looks beautiful. Ubuntu just makes it better.

KDE is functional, not very but just barely enough, but it's fugly.

But this is cosmetic stuff. That's always been a critical weakness of Linux, sadly.

So I ignore it, and on everything except Ubuntu, I use Xfce. Doesn't look pretty, but it works, and works well.

The purple / orange theme is gross looking and clashes with neutral colors from third parties. It just looks extremely unprofessional. They should just ship vanilla GNOME, it’s beautiful.

I'm not a designer so it is difficult to point out exactly how it should be improved. My reaction to it however is it has a very amateur look in my opinion. I've typically installed Gnome extensions to make it look better (though I think the one I've been using is probably going a little too far for most users).