I don’t like macOS or GNOME, but if I had to use something from that paradigm I think GNOME is way better. GNOME feels like how Mac users talk about macOS. Whereas macOS just has nonsensical stupid things like delete key behavior, apps staying open after hitting the red X, lack of window snapping, etc that make no sense in 2025. GNOME at least has a rationale and a workflow behind it, even if I don’t like it I can respect it.

>the only (rather big) downside is that the web runs visually worse on it. I don't know how, but painting and font rendering feels suboptimal (compared to Windows and MacOS).

This is definitely worth investigating as that shouldn’t be the case at all…web performance is one of the best benefits of Linux. That’s why it’s often recommended as the best developer system especially for web devs, as it’s the most native web platform that most web technologies are developed for and ultimately deployed to. Font should be crisp (assuming you’re not using fractional scaling, which can cause font issues on any OS). And painting/performance should be the fastest of the three major OS. On the same system Linux and Windows feel somewhat comparable with an edge to Linux I think simply do a a more responsive system overall. And anything beats macOS, even using a brand new Mac feels like molasses sometimes. I would investigate drivers/scaling/hardware acceleration, cross chrome/chromium browsers and Firefox to see if you can narrow down your issue.