I think Gnome apps in Gnome are actually pretty alright.
Not really jarring anymore with ok functionality between apps. I wish gnome-shell was more stable and shipped with a dock…
> I wish gnome-shell was more stable and shipped with a dock…
It does. It's just that it's hidden now by default.
What I really would like is a simple e-mail/messaging program to consolidate my mail, Slack and Teams inflows on a single threaded timeline.
YMMV. I myself am very happy with Gnome and would say it's about as nice to use as a Mac. You can, of course, install ugly applications with horrendous UIs, that use Athena or Motif widgets, limited only to X bitmapped fonts or an ncurses UI that would work on a VT-52, and so on - but that's kind of a feature of Linux - it's Unix and it runs a lot of things originally built in ages long past. It can be consistent if you want, and it can embrace the past in ways no other OS can dream of.
Except, maybe, IBM's z/OS, but that's a completely different beast.