Ir was my first desktop I encountered when introduced to GNU/Linux and it is actually what made me delay my switch to GNU/Linux since I disliked it so much. back then I did not know there are more desktop options so Iit made me think the whole GNU/Linux is not interesting to me. It was not until a few years later until I was told there are other options and I was shown KDE desktop (not called Plasma yet back then) that I fell in love with GNU/Linux.
Why I did not like GNOME was that it was too limited and limiting and unconfigurable. And I would say nowadays it has gotten even worse while KDE Plasma has improved a lot. I think GNU/Linux would have a lot more success at capturing the desktop OS market if KDE Plasma would be the major and default desktop in all those enterprise distributions. It is just so much better and so flexible you can even turn it to mimic any other desktop or even better customize it to fit your wery own best way of workflow and using computers.