I'd like to see a better GUI before forcing that switch. Is there something more simple than the Gnome GUI that ships by default with Ubuntu? I've been playing

I'd like to see a better GUI before forcing that switch. Is there something more simple than the Gnome GUI that ships by default with Ubuntu? I've been playing with Gnome/KDE since the late 90's and they still are behind IMHO. Is there something more like iOS-simplicity for Linux distros? That would be key.