[mvdtnz]

As always with Linux it depends on which distribution you're on but that hasn't been my experience at all with distributions like Ubuntu and Mint. I used Ubuntu back when the close, maximise and minimise buttons were on the top right and they moved them right from under me. I've tried to adjust to using flat packs but struggled with their very serious limitations while programs I rely on are no longer available in other package types. I have seen them see-saw between the horrible global menu and window menus, make wholesale changes to areas of the settings screen like display settings and mouse and trackpad settings. And I don't even know how many wildly different iterations of that horrible main menu application selector UI I have had to suffer through.

[gnramires]

I use MATE, an old desktop environment descendant from GNOME 2. If I apply the principle of "It should last at least about as long as it's been around...", I can hopefully use it in peace :) (It'll probably look the same in another 20 years!)

I really don't see the benefit of almost anything else that came later (I did add an app launch shortcut that I rarely use). I also autohide most of the UI by default (bars and menus), so it's just there to do its basic function and allow me to focus. Performance is excellent.

That said, I think the main difference is mostly from community-focused development, it tends to bring out genuine usability concerns (which is why I think most *nix DEs work fine).

[flukus]

I've been through all the ups and downs around Ubuntu and gnome, but at least those changes generally happen at a time of my choosing too. I don't go to a commonly used app one day to do something quick only to find the entire UI was updated overnight.

Of course even the cli world has had it's changes though, systemd alone made decades of documentation obsolete.