GNOME is a minimalist, albeit too simple, desktop environment. It's a part of so many Linux distros, and is the baseline of what you can expect as a desktop experience. GNOME is not new to me, as I've seen it evolve from 2016 to what it's become now, and it certainly is an improvement.
But the pain of adopting such an approach is that it doesn't ship many features that you expect from a DE by default. The difference is more visible when you switch from other OS like Windows or macOS, because certain features like simple app categories and advanced tiling support aren't there.