[loudmax]

GNOME is the default desktop for nearly every major Linux distribution. It's the desktop that nearly everyone experiences if they decide to give Linux a try. As such its shortcomings are much more apparent than for something like, say, Xfce that you have to go out of your way to experience.

My frustrations with GNOME are not about polish, they're about reliability. Users don't care about polish when they update their OS and suddenly wifi doesn't work. I sincerely hope GNOME is more reliable now than it was in the past.

[kaba0]

It is the default because it is deemed the most feature-complete and stable. Unfortunately not being too stable is all-around true of linux desktop (though I really like the recent trend with wayland - many previously hacky parts just work now!)