Pretty much every distro does this. Like most things, the way to get the most out of Linux is to learn and explore it. I've been happily ignoring the "GUI Wars"

Pretty much every distro does this. Like most things, the way to get the most out of Linux is to learn and explore it. I've been happily ignoring the "GUI Wars" because I'm using i3, a tiling window manager that AFAIK nothing comes with out the box, but you just install it and configure it and bam, you're away. No worrying about Gnome 3 or KDE bloat or whatever. You set it up so you have a nice enough GTK theme that is then emulated by Qt (so things look consistent) - I use Zukitwo - and then you just pick which apps you like and use them. There's no deciding one way or other, you just use the programs you like.