I didn't really like the default look of version 4. Oxygen had depressing colors, it lacked fineness. I always switched the theme to Fusion, or Cleanlooks, which imitated the Clearlooks GTK theme.
Version 5, with Breeze, is really good. Very elegant. By the way I also tend to find Gnome with the Breeze theme way nicer than with Adwaita (which is already fine).
The only DE I find almost as nice looking as Plasma with the default settings is macOS.
They are also constantly cleaning up the UI and making it simpler, bit by bit.
Version 3 was fine. Very fine even for the time.
I didn't really like the default look of version 4. Oxygen had depressing colors, it lacked fineness. I always switched the theme to Fusion, or Cleanlooks, which imitated the Clearlooks GTK theme.
Version 5, with Breeze, is really good. Very elegant. By the way I also tend to find Gnome with the Breeze theme way nicer than with Adwaita (which is already fine).
The only DE I find almost as nice looking as Plasma with the default settings is macOS.
They are also constantly cleaning up the UI and making it simpler, bit by bit.