It was somewhat of a special situation back when Gnome 3 dropped. Ubuntu & flavours of it was still regarded as the go-to distro by many and KDE still had a somewhat damaged reputation due to KDE 3 (even though 4 was already available, however that also had some issues). Many environments we know today didn’t exist yet, so lots of people were rather distraught when Gnome broke with a lot of concepts and dropped what arguably was a horrendous DE.
Many of our current DEs are Gnome 2 or 3 forks (MATE, Cinnamon, Budgie, and back then also Unity), made exactly because of this whole debacle.
It was somewhat of a special situation back when Gnome 3 dropped. Ubuntu & flavours of it was still regarded as the go-to distro by many and KDE still had a somewhat damaged reputation due to KDE 3 (even though 4 was already available, however that also had some issues). Many environments we know today didn’t exist yet, so lots of people were rather distraught when Gnome broke with a lot of concepts and dropped what arguably was a horrendous DE.
Many of our current DEs are Gnome 2 or 3 forks (MATE, Cinnamon, Budgie, and back then also Unity), made exactly because of this whole debacle.
In my experience it was KDE 3 that was praised, while 4 was shunned for being too bloated, and trying to be too much like Windows Aero
Yeah, it’s been interesting seeing all the alternatives popping up. I think I’ve met a lot of people who really liked MATE.
I’ve mostly kept using XFCE. But before I had i3 only.