There's also a huge pile of small features that go beyond the scope of a comment to list, which are either implemented inconsistently or not at all. For example, in GNOME and Pantheon, window minimization is disabled by default and even when enabled lacks integration with whatever dock you may be using.
GNOME generally is rather odd, even if it's one of the more polished options. It strikes me more as a somewhat-desktop-adapted iOS than it does macOS.
>GNOME generally is rather odd, even if it's one of the more polished options. It strikes me more as a somewhat-desktop-adapted iOS than it does macOS.
That's because Gnome has to fulfill different responsibilities as a toolkit. It has to accommodate for touch-enabled devices, which pads out the UI quite a bit. It takes some getting used to, but I think I'm finally quite into it. It does a nice job of maximizing the actionable area of your window without sacrificing usability, uniformity or screen space. Compared to Big Sur's design language, the Gnome devs are already quite pretty far ahead of the game in my opinion. Gnome 40[2] positions the DE in a pretty good spot for the next several years, too.
[1] https://github.com/helloSystem/hello [2] https://forty.gnome.org/
How do they not go far enough with it? The only thing that I can think of them not emulating is the menu bar in the top left, but the Gnome team is already flying pretty close to the sun with their recreation. Even still, there are ways to implement a global menu bar into Gnome with a little effort if it means that much to you. Otherwise, I really can't fathom what you're missing out on, besides some walls for your garden.