Yes but extensions work to a degree and not out of the box. For instance, when they abandoned desktop icons a long time ago we never had and extension that delivered the same polished experience.
GNOME has some quite strict design guidelines (a “vision”, if you will). And sticking to that a vision has enabled them to create a very polished DE (probably the most polished DE on Linux). What people get wrong is that GNOME wasn’t really made for desktops. It was made for mobile devices (laptops, tablets, and in the future phones). Using GNOME on a “proper” mobile device really makes sense. No, that doesn’t mean using a laptop connected to an external monitor all the time, or just using it at a desk all the time. It means using a laptop as a laptops, going out and about, using it without a mouse and using it with it’s internal display.
GNOME wasn’t really made for desktops
I can certainly believe that. Yet, pretty much every desktop distro ships it as the default, which boggles my mind.
@thegreenguy @TCB13 yep this exactly I first used gnome on a laptop and the experience is great the gesture support makes all the workspaces and different overviews work perfectly
then I started using it on desktop and it just doesn’t work the same. it feels clunky and far from as smooth.