I used to be KDE nut until version 4 came around. I stuck for a while but once gnome 3 got a few years of development on it's back I started liking it more over the direction KDE took. Nowadays I just use GNOME and think their design and HIG works really well across multiple different devices. Be it a desktop with a big screen and tons of real estate for lots of windows showing up concurrently, running on a cramped notebook screen with mostly just a single FS widnow or two side by side or as a "couch" experience on my HTPC, with a great interface for a "ten foot UI" usage.
I've also heard some good feedback on how well it works on a phone/tablet context but haven't had the chance of trying that my-self. Perhaps the GNOME project is on the right track for converging all those computing experiences in one in a way that makes sense, specially compared to the train wreck that microsoft's attempt unifying stuff in windows 8/mobile was.
Disclaimer: I use GNOME on my main computer and on my small-factor, touch screen enabled, couch laptop.
In terms of usability and UX, there loads of things that frustrate me. They seem to be due to design choices that the dev team made and that they don't intend to change anytime soon, so I know I'm stuck with them as long as I stick with GNOME. For that reason, I also know that someday I'll probably just snap (no, Canonical, not you) and switch DE. But for now I don't have the mental room, energy nor time to do so, so I just deal with my frustrations and stick with what Just Works™. I have to use Windows and MacOS at $dailyJob anyway so I'm used to having a subpar experience with my OS.
On the touch screen side, they indeed nailed it, as far as I can tell. I do have the occasional driver issue, due to my laptop being an obscure and not really well supported model, but the UX is far more enjoyable on my laptop than on my main computer. There's still much work to do to have a unified experience à la Apple, or as Microsoft envisioned it at the time, but they did make Linux usable on small touch screens.
It feels like GNOME has a touch-screen first approach, which is good on one hand, and bad on the other.
If only gnome shell could be used on Mac OS, I would jump at heartbeat. I really can’t understand what apple developers had in mind when bringing window in focus which is present in the current screen it switches to a different workplace. Is it a bug or is it intentional is hard to tell with macOS.
