Honestly...
I think you can tell from much of what I say what my opinion is of Gnome.
It is not so much how Gnome performs on the desktop that bothers me. It is how Gnome Performs as a group and an entity.
It is 100% fine that one user may love how Gnome works as a desktop and I dislike it- as Linux offers choice. It offers variety and options and continued opportunity to learn and to tackle challenges.
But I hate Gnome.
For me to say that Zorin OS 16 took Gnome and made it usable for me speaks volumes. I still do not use it because I have the choices Linux offers.
But no other Distro makes Gnome usable, in my perspective, the way Zorin OS 16 went above and beyond to do. If I had to, I could use Gnome D.E. the way ZorinGroup configured it (I remain grateful to have other options...)
Given the magnitude of ZorinGroups achievement in
adapting Gnome into a usable fully fledged environment
The hype around Gnome40
It is no surprise that a person may think that Zorin OS is using Gnome40.
Interestingly (Perhaps I am wrong about this) I think ZorinGroup will struggle harder to adapt Gnome40 than they did with Gnome 3.38, since Gnome40 brings further reductions in Gnome Desktop as a whole.
Perhaps unintentionally, you just gave ZorinGroup very high praise.
''Perhaps unintentionally, you just gave ZorinGroup very high praise.''
And they do deserve it!! I have just made the move over to the OS and Zorin 16 fills my needs at this point. OS like this help those that need a learning curve. To each his own...but you can't knock this OS regardless. Many hard hours put in to arrive at this outcome
Zorin OS 16 is a true phenomenon of design and implementation.
Prior to having had the chance to test Zorin OS 16 Alpha and Beta builds, I was not excited abuot the release of Zorin OS 16. I had already extensively used Ubuntu 20.04 at that point and did not see any way that Zorin OS 16 would include anything impressive.
Was I wrong...
Zorin OS 16 may be based off of Ubuntu 20.04, but is nothing like it.
I can be critical at times of critical feedback and I can attest to the troubleshooting directly witnessed on this forum.
But Zorin OS 16 is, hands down, by far, absolutely, without doubt the best Zorin OS release we have ever seen.
I find myself having fallen into my own trap, as I am not really excited about the release of Zorin OS 16 Lite. The way I have it figured, I have already run XFCE 4.16 on Zorin OS 16 Core and...
No, it wasn't unintentional. I presently have my PC triple-booting Win11, ZorinOS 16 Pro, and Ubuntu Impish Indri; I had my Zorin install confused with the Gnome 40 on Impish (I suppose that's because I have the desktops set up almost alike and use the same wallpaper for both). For me, vanilla Gnome (40 or less) is dull, but Team Zorin has done a great job with it.
I suppose one way of nailing down your favorite is to find out which DE makes you hate the largest number of all the rest. Deepin 2x is a deprecation from earlier iterations, KDE feels loose and runny, XFCE looks like it's twenty years old (with the exception of the discontinued ChaletOS), not to mention the poor eye-candy of LXQt, LXDE, and other minimalists of that type. Windows 11 is fine but it is still way too familiar-looking, and even macOS could use some attention to detail. So for now, it's GNOME, but with a caveat, that it be customized almost to the hilt, because vanilla G is, in a word, dreary. And that Cantarell font is horrible. There, I said it.
Ok, so I am looking for a desktop environment which is light, bug-free, good looking by default, highly configurable and customizable.
What would you all recommend?
No, you must logout to change desktop environments.
No to both.
Gnome-Extensions patch what Gnome removed, removes or is missing. There are no extensions in XFCE because XFCE is a full desktop - extensions are unneeded.
But you can install
sudo apt install xfce4-goodies
if you want.
If you give it a month or so, Zorin OS 16 Lite may be available.
Thank you, I have decided to wait for Zorin Lite to arrive, but gnome is very slow and it feels like there is no difference between gnome and Windows performance.
For me speed comes first and then looks. Privacy and open-source stuffs don't matter to me.
@Aravisian I just posted in the Ubuntu and GNOME rant what you posted here but better than me. lol
Even though I am still pretty new to Linux (Apr 2021), I could see what Ubuntu and GNOME were doing in my short learning time. As I said in that post, I have been around corporations enough to see signs of what direction they are taking. Once the word "lockdown" is added to a company's vocabulary, I know the path they are making and alarms should be going off in every FOSS believing developer, programmer and users head right then!
BTW, I use XFCE. I am very excited for Z 16 Pro LITE coming! I don't like KDE (buggiest mess and terrible "customizing" DE I have ever tried) and you already know my feeling about GNOME. But as stated by others here, Zorin took GNOME and really made it shine. I just like XFCE a bit more.
I like them all for existing - variety is the spice of life. Personally at this moment cinnamon is alright for me, a KDE Plazma is probably the best, xfce is ok and gnome is not to my liking. Not tried MATE yet or the many others.
I would have to go XFCE. It is just a good work horse de. Easily set it up to meet your needs. My only misgiving is that lately I can't seem to get the XFCE sensors to work on start up.
I also like Enlightenment for it's small overhead. I've run into small issues every time I've used it though (like the XFCE sensors not working at start up).
Plasma is nice - is stripped down like in Kubuntu 18.04.3 - fairly small overhead.
Now I go off the deep end with Fluxbox and ICEwm.
Mate is okay if done well. Lxde was okay. I don't get lxqt as it seems to take more overhead than lxde.
For me GNOME is the best and XFCE is good too.
Im watching a lot of YT reviews and i really dont understand all the hate gnome gets in youtube videos , it seems average users prefer it most of the time so it must have doing something right
It really isn't the DE as much as it is the devs of GNOME that are hurting themselves. They are becoming more and more of the likes of M$ and Crapple. And they don't like anyone modifying their precious GNOME and make it a headache for those that make some QoL tweaks for it. The GNOME devs don't listen to feedback and think everyone else is under them. As a DE, GNOME can be good and much improved and a great DE but unless the devs get their collective heads out of their butts, distros (like Pop OS) will move away from GNOME.
I used to be a fan of Gnome, but for heavy DE I would opt for KDE and LXQt over xfce. I was a fan of Gnome because of its superior accessibility app Orca, the screen reader. But now Devuan offers screen reader for the installation too and Orca works in KDE, LXQt, xfce and Gnome flashback. Why LXQt? Because it uses KDE libraries.
I have just made the move over to the OS and Zorin 16 fills my needs at this point. OS like this help those that need a learning curve. To each his own...but you can't knock this OS regardless. Many hard hours put in to arrive at this outcome
I am very excited for Z 16 Pro LITE coming! I don't like KDE (buggiest mess and terrible "customizing" DE I have ever tried) and you already know my feeling about GNOME. But as stated by others here, Zorin took GNOME and really made it shine. I just like XFCE a bit more. 
