I dropped gnome when they trashed the desktop for the new tablet like fad. Went to xfve, then mate, cinnamon, KDE… to me gnome with Compiz fusion was the pinnacle of desktops. I get why they wanted to start fresh, but it broke my perfect setup. I haven’t even bothered to look back since then, how did it evolve?
It sure was not for me, the minimalist / efficient modern take they went for, was the antithesis of my thoughts process. Good for portable devices is probably true, that’s why I couldn’t stand it on a desktop, it felt like it was meant to take over Android on tablets. it was a huge change.