There is nothing wrong with GTK3. Clearly we have been using it for a long time just fine. I mention it because gtk3 came out in 2011. Which means it took the xfce team 9 years to perform a migration which still isn't complete yet.
Now I don't want to shit on the work of the xfce team because they work on this on their free time and provide us alternative options and ask nothing in return, but its a data point showing why one would preference Gnome over XFCE. The Gnome team has a lot of resources behind it to just get things done and push new technology out faster than the rest.
Re:On the Graying of Gnome
by mixmastamyk on Monday December 21, 2020 @02:46AM
(#25492930)
The problem is that to get the new features you have to accept a new way of working. One that is worse than the classic MacOS or Windows 2000 was. Another reason many folks are in no hurry.
XFCE is still in the process of upgrading to GTK3 when GTK4 is already out and they still have made no progress on migrating to wayland so its not a usable DE for a modern desktop experience.
What's wrong with GTK3? And "modern desktop experience" just reads like meaningless marketing fluff.