GNOME is a great desktop environment. Ignore the people here who are whining; there's always a bunch in any DE-related Linux post, regardless of the DE being discussed.

But, just to add to the discussion, KDE is the only real alternative as far as feature parity is concerned (that isn't just a fork).

They all have pros and cons. If you like how it works out of the box, you've already won.

I ran Gnome for years with a collection of plugins and hidden gsettings to make it windows95-esque. Bottom bar, left apps, small bars, multi-screen, stacked windows, full time and date in the tray.

And every gnome update, a plugin or two would break, and I'd go find someone else's plugin that did the same thing, but wouldn't break.

Finally, I tried KDE on a new install, and it was exactly how I wanted it out, out of the box.

It's been a long time now. For all I know, Gnome supports all that up front in config.

but if it's how you want it, that's all you need.

The issue is that GNOME is incredibly opinionated and makes it very difficult, if not impossible to configure some basic functionality that every other DE has options for. GNOME will work for you if you want a DE that works exactly the way stock GNOME works, but as soon as you want to change anything, you run into a brick wall. Nearly any other Linux DE can be configured to look and work similar to GNOME, but GNOME can't be configured to work like anything other than the vanilla GNOME the devs insist you must use. It's the antithesis of Linux IMO (modularity, reconfigurability, config-file-driven) and acts more like a MacOS skin.

KDE Plasma

If Gnome has worked for you the past ten years then keep using it.

XFCE 😅