From a UX perspective I haven't really seen much of an issue with KDE/Gnome in the past 15-20 years. The problem to me has been consistency (this app uses GTK

From a UX perspective I haven't really seen much of an issue with KDE/Gnome in the past 15-20 years. The problem to me has been consistency (this app uses GTK so it behaves like this or you have to install it this way because it uses apt instead of rpm), administration, and support for apps/games you want to run. The few dealbreakers (GPU, Wifi, trackpad, power management support) weren't related to "the desktop" outside of multi-monitor or hidpi support. I had a few non-technical people use Linux in the early 2000s and loved it. My public library at the time was running Linux for their Book Catalog (on much older hardware than Windows would support). In general Linux Desktops were all reimplementations of Window's UI concepts (Desktop, Launcher Menu, Task Bar, Status Bar, etc). It seems like Gnome's game plan was to intentionally remove a bunch of stuff for the sake of simplification. Then Linux Desktops actually started innovating (macOS style app launcher, fast search to launch, ditching status bar and desktop). Windows seems to have made their own UX missteps as well.