[MattPalmer1086]

Maybe I'm not a demanding user, but I have no major issues with Gnome. I also liked Unity. Willing to give Cosmic a try, as I use PopOS and like their approach.

Mostly I just want a desktop environment to find and launch apps, do some basic window management, and get out of the way. I got more important things to do than worry about tweaking things endlessly...

[graemep]

Fine, if its suits you. Then again, if that is all you do, why use Gnome: XFCE or even LXDE will do all that fine and they are lighter than Gnome and change less.

I quite like XFCE, but I use KDE for a few reasons. It has tiling extensions and with a large monitor tiling works better for me.I like a lot of KDE applications (Dolphin and Kate in particular) and they integrate a bit better with KDE (widgets in panels, KRunner).

YMMV.

[MattPalmer1086]

I don't care enough to install non default desktops. You are coming at it from the perspective of trying to find something that really works well for you, and that's fine.

I'm coming at it from the perspective of I really don't care, unless there is some show stopper that forces me to.

[netule]

I upgraded to Ubuntu 23 a few weeks ago, in which GNOME decided to remove app menus requiring me to install a wonky extension to reclaim functionality. The top horizontal menu is still there taking up screen real estate, mind you, it’s just less useful.

These changes are annoying enough with each upgrade to make me consider switching DEs.

[MattPalmer1086]

I tend to stick to LTS releases, but that certainly doesn't stop gnome's endless quest to remove everything!