Nah, tried all of those and settled on Mate.

IMO the most important aspect of a desktop environment is that you never notice it. That's what I loved so much about Windows 2000 (and why I lamented every UI change they made since then).

That's the exact reason I am stuck with Gnome. First it might be a bit strange, but then you realize it's there, everything is one tab away yet you never actually see it.

Giving maximal screen estate to whatever I focus on while being as distraction less as a WM just can be.

However anyway, glad you found something that works for you! That's what choice is for

MATE is a fork of Gnome 2. Not everyone likes Gnome 3 and newer versions.

Gnome 2 is just a windows 95 clone with Gimmics. Only from gnome shell on to gnome 3 the whole concept was brought to a new level.

However I understand if people don't like that, it's new and maybe won't last it sure is easier to stick to a taskbar, etc when you are used to it.

That's exactly what I like about it. Windows 3.x was terrible. Win95 looked pretty but was a garbage os. But windows NT with the win95 UI on it finally convinced me to ditch my Amiga (although I was VERY tempted by NeXT). And honestly, I haven't seen any UI enhancements since then that are useful to me.

But does that mean they will be stuck forever to an ancient GTK version ?

It has supported GTK3+ for years now. I'm not familiar with the specifics, but GTK3/4 applications run fine.

The beauty is that they can do that on their own time. Possibly even never.

I use i3wm and a split ergonomic keyboard. I use a shell instead of a file manager. I am fine with 99% of people never doing that, so long as I can.