But there are other options like Xfce, and there are quite a few variants, like Cinnamon, MATE, i3, etc. [0]
I still think Windows 10 looks and feels relatively polished (if you don't dig too deep and see just how many iterations they've gone through and still haven't gone back to fix.) I think Windows 11 feels a bit goofy - like they are trying for polish now, but it's in that modern overly spaced out and flat look that I can't seem to appreciate.
I found Linux Mint Cinnamon to be quite nice, and KDE is really nice in my opinion. More consistent than Windows in some ways.
Ditto, I am not an average user, but Windows was only really good on Windows 7, and I never really liked Mac OS (use it at work as a MCB is the laptop they issued for me)
Windows 11 and Windows 10 with the last updates as well are just awful in terms of UI; the UX works more or less alright, but many of the default applications, and specially the settings, control panel, etc. are just an inconsistent mess, awful flat UI without any kind of colors, etc.
Mac is much nicer, nicer fonts, colors, overall look although personally I can't stand the UX too much (specially in terms of window management) apps are usually great tho.
I'd very much rather use something like Kubuntu or Pop_OS, Cinnamon works fine as well, honestly nowadays they just work and are usually better off than Windows by default.
The whole GTK2/3, now 4? and KDE, Plasma, Kirigami, what have you nowadays, isn't an inconsistent mess? I was using Linux (fedora 37) recently and it was not a consistent experience, either.
If anything, W11 is more consistent across all applications even if the settings/control panel have a weird Jekyll/Hyde personality to it at times.
Have you used gnome shell in the last five years?
My desktop experience on Linux is so clean. Everything is a "windows" key press away. I hit they then enter the first characters of the program name. It's all composited and GPU accelerated too, and interaction is instantaneous.
Almost anything that needs additional polish is on the web and looks the same on every computer...
For me, what seems janky is stuff with the systems on MacOS (planned hardware obsolescence = jank, batteries that die after a predetermined number of years, expanding until they break the motherboard = jank) or the user treatment and configuration of Windows (the article in question gives a lovely example of windows jank). In short, being treated like a consumer = jank. I can't understand how anyone puts up with it, much less says "polished" when referring to it. But I'll admit I'm weird!
Visual Studio has had free express editions, before community was introduced, since 2010.
Even those express editions were more feature rich than GNOME tooling.
Trying to force a UNIX shaped build environment and development setup into a Windows shaped hole on the other hand can be a pain.