I disagree that this is an issue. The main advantage of Linux for me is that I have choice (including using various desktop environments that the author is annoyed by; I used GNOME for years and eventually had too many problems with it so I switched to KDE), and those choices are not controlled by one entity which, in the case of Apple and Microsoft, view me only as a customer to extract money from.
The biggest battle desktop Linux is losing is the one where a minority of devs are dictating their preferred compute paradigm to a majority of users that don’t agree it’s a good solution.
I can “fix” Gnome in about 2m with extensions, but that doesn’t help when a new user loads it up for the first time and is hit with the unintuitive ideology of some nerds.
But your use case is why GNOME have extensions. To alter the defaults and add stuff that they don't care about, but you do. In macOS, you have to basically reverse engineer and use private APIs.
Absolutely. A commercial product can succeed while maintaining an auteur's vision, so long as that vision largely aligns with users' needs. In contrast, open-source projects are often not viewed through a "product" lens, to their detriment.
When this happens in open source, we get clunky and idiosyncratic (though sometimes lovable) software like GNOME and GIMP. When it happens in the commercial world, we get projects like Megalopolis.
For example, how am i supposed to discover how to maximize a window?
I don't even understand why they thought it would be a good idea. On mobile there is at least the justification that it helps keep the valuable screen estate for "important things" (although anecdotally I've seen how much more my mother and grandmother both struggle with button-less iPhones because they can't remember the gestures). But on the desktop, even on laptops, it is a very weak argument.
Gnome made several decisions toat make it super complex for normal users. Windows have a taskbar. Mac have a dock. KDE have a taskbar.
And I really like Gnome design language, UI. But the UX is awful.
I'm not sure that means anything. Every time I have to help my kids or wife with a Windows problem, I'm perpetually plagued by how weird it is.
The only people who find Windows easy or obvious are already Windows users. And yes, the same can be said of Linux environments.
There will always be more “Linuxy” out in the weeds desktops for people who want them. Most people who want that built their own setup anyway, making whatever the big DEs do more or less moot.