I don't really get all this #GNOME hate. I used it for some time, I've also used KDE and i3. I even used some of the weirder DMs. And the best way to describe GNOME is "fine". It has the familiarity of Windows, but with much less bloat and with some cool concepts (such as much better virtual desktops).

We don't have to like everything, GNOME is usable enough that I could work with it for about a year, then I changed to i3, which improved my productivity maybe 10% after I learned the 2000 keyboard shortcuts.