I've found nowadays I want a desktop that stays out of my way as much as possible. Preferably it should be lightweight and responsive.

I can still remember when I first started using Linux how excited I was that you could customize everything. I spent hours tweaking KDE to look just how I wanted it. Right down to the appearance of the clock on the system tray. Then AIGLX came out - I spent even more time compiling kernel modules running custom compositors etc so I could have wobbly windows and a spinning cube to switch virtual desktops. You know what for all the time it took me to get everything working it solved precisely none of the issues I had.

Nowadays (10+ years later has it really been that long) I don't care about any of that I've come to the realization the desktop just doesn't matter it's the applications.

I use the computer to run applications (be it firefox, emacs, terminal emulator, whatever else I need to get work done) make it easy for me to launch applications and make it easy for me to toggle between applications. Other than that stay out of my way.

I think a lot of long time users end up feeling the same way which leads to conclusion a lot of techies don't care about the desktop. Which I think is true but not for the reason you think.

I had the same opinion - I even used windows 7 for years because I didn't really care to configure anything. I switched when I discovered tiling window managers, and application launchers. I think the ergonomic benefits have kinda paid off - since I think using fuzzy searches to do almost everything, splittting and killing my windows as I need them, on as many desktops as I want - is a way more sane user interface than the default floating window + desktop idea, if much less friendly to somebody who isn't expecting it.

What desktop environment do you use now? What you are asking for does sound like the reason why people who use GNOME like it. It is focused on having sane and opinionated defaults but it is still tweakable via advanced settings (tweak tool, dconf) and extensions.

I use i3 with some GNOME services. I tried full GNOME late last year, but I much prefer a proper tiling window manager. On MacOS I used SizeUp which fulfilled my requirements pretty well, but AFAIK there isn't something like that for GNOME.

If it weren't for elementary OS, I would have probably never switched to Linux as my primary driver. elementary OS Luna (0.2) was the first Linux distro that I've used full time. Freya (0.3) was a bit of a mess that made me switch to GNOME, so I haven't even tried Loki (0.4).

I'm really looking forward to their next release, especially ever since they've announced that they're gonna consider the next version to be the first one that's production ready (and therefore switching the version number from 0.4 to 5.0).

I'm for sure gonna get back to it as soon as they release the first beta.

more opinionated like MacOS (but without all the restrictions).

Isn't this a contradiction? Pick for you, but still let you pick?

I think this might be possible: all you need to do is provide a good default. Most people will just use that, but those who don’t want it are free to pick something else.

In complicated systems this just leads to literally everyone being unhappy: You get vocal users who's weird combination of settings lead to edge case bugs, leading to devs getting stretched thin playing whack-a-mole and neglecting the needs of base case users.

Yes, but this is a practical rather than an inherent issue. You’ll see these crop up anytime you have a lot of people using something.

Honestly not really. Complexity breeds bugs simply due to surface area, and complexity grows exponentially with features (as in, each boolean option you add doubles the number of states your system can be in).

Isn't one of the main criticism of GNOME that it's too opinionated?

There is nothing wrong with being opinionated, see Rails and DHH - it's not everybody's cup of tea, but it worked well for the audience it was designed for.

As I understand the issue most people have with GNOME is the choices the developers seem to be making are making the UI prettier, but making the UX a lot worse. Plus the out of the box defaults are pretty bad - if you install GNOME on Arch it's going to be completely different to a customised distribution like Fedora Workstation.

And those people are exactly the reason why Linux will never be the OS of choice on desktop for the vast majority of people. Which it should be, because it's a great piece of software, underneath the horrible UX.

In this sense, Linux already is the OS for hundreds of millions, in the form of Android.

It just got a very different UI and somehow reworked userland.

Is this what you'd prefer on the desktop, too?

Personally, I think so. Leave the custom Arch or Debian builds for those who need it, and have a polished Linux distro “for the masses”. That’s basically what Chrome OS is, and it’s pretty popular (though, I’d like it if it was more customizable like Android is rather than just being a web browser).

well that opinion is expressed by people who want nearly zero opinion OSs.

Opinionated and restrictive goes hand in hand...