I think it is more about the underlying "paternalism" than any specific UI/UX design. Damn it, i have seen a comment from a prominent Gnome developer basically

I think it is more about the underlying "paternalism" than any specific UI/UX design. Damn it, i have seen a comment from a prominent Gnome developer basically stating that users are idiots. This based on some usability testing that was done back in the day, apparently. So expect more and more out of Gnome, and by extension Freedesktop, to be about putting users in padded cells...