The first actual Linux DE I ever used was Suse with KDE, which at the time (circa 1999) was impressive but not what KDE is today. I was an electrical/engineer at the time working mostly on IBM workstation/mainframe software, and more and more being forced to work with, actually transitioning to, MS office and MS word for documentation purposes which was an absolute pain. I can only applaud Linux DE developers for being able to continue to swim on against the tide of the MS oligarchy in business.Would any Gnome users or DDs care to join the discussion?
That said there are several reasons why I use gnome, but not one of them has anything to do with the DE appearance. The foremost reason is because I prefer Debian stable and have had the best experience with it as far as bugs and software compatibility. I have found it to be the least problematic, and filled with the most reliably functional software, and in all honesty I really don't particularly care about the appearance, as in general I am using a dozen applications at once and once started I never notice or need the base DE anyway. I just want it to work reliably and Debian stable with gnome does accomplish that impressively, and it is aimed at an inevitable future forced upon Linux in general by the RHEL/MS agreements. Wayland has already come to WSL with its modified weston and MS is dedicated to cross platform compatibility more and more though the concessions always seem to land on the Linux DE side due to MS's hardware exclusivity agreements. So yes, I do prefer gnome because it is the default DE for Debian stable, and allows for the most software compatibility, and runs wayland.
I install Linux software for new users coming from bad Windows experiences pretty regularly and I always install Linux Lite as their first experience with Linux. It is an XFCE rendering with some intuitive simple add on applications that they find easy to grasp, and one of the most new user friendly communities in Linux, and a dedicated and available developer. Know it or not most Windows users find XFCE the simplest Linux DE to pick up on. Why not, given that their previous experience other than typing letters in MSWord was all with mouse driven menus, the very opposite of my own first experiences.
I use gnome because it is the default DE for Debian stable, and thus has the most already configured available software, and is the least problematic DE and most compatible DE for stable. If another DE becomes the default for Debian stable I will use that one. I don't hate or love DEs, but I really love stability. I hate repairing my own systems because all I do most days is repair other people's systems. A couple hundred MB of RAM doesn't mean much to 8G or more of onboard RAM, a four core or more CPU, and a 1T drive. ANY DE running under 1G RAM is not bloated. The capabilities of today's modern Linux software and applications has overwhelmingly accomplished just the opposite of bloat. If you're old enough remember what you used to be able to do on computer GUIs compared to what you can do now my point about bloat becomes obvious.
TC