Put another way, if X is designed to do Y, you can't say "X sucks" just because Y isn't interesting to you. You might say, "X is a bad implementation of Y". You might say, "I don't like Y therefore I don't use X". You might discuss whether or not Y is a valid goal, or whether or not X does a good job of achieving Y, but any serious discussion about anything requires that everyone involved make an effort to recognize that X and Y are two completely different things.
The key here is "serious discussion". If people don't want to seriously discuss this, then by all means just post opinions about whether or not something is good at what it does based on how well it matches up with your particular tastes and requirements. But the whole point of HN ought to be that everyone makes at least a token effort to seriously discuss this stuff. You can go anywhere if you just want to have conversations about what sucks and what rules and leave it at that.
And I can't believe I'm saying this on hacker news but there is a difference between "polished" and "subjectively ugly".
What's wrong with the "cartoon icons"? They look like Windows 7 icons. You know Windows 7, right? A lot of people called it "Microsoft's most polished desktop ever".