It is a crying shame that Linus, or some other benevolent dictator for life like Linus, never emerged to steer the Linux userland.
If there are parallel realities and alternate timelines, then somewhere out there is the one where everyone settled on GNUStep/WindowMaker in the 90s and Linux took over the Desktop by 2005.
GNUStep/WindowMaker are too "ugly" and many people use Linux purely out of being gaga at the beautiful window borders. Just look at any recent YouTube video about Linux, it'll likely be about how much better (KDE|Gnome|etc.) LOOK than Windows 11 (usability? That's that?)
To be honest, Gnome is a lot more usable than Windows in my experience. Most of the software I expect to be provided by the OS simply are better under Gnome: file browser, image viewer, terminal, windows and desktop manager (it's kind of shocking how the windows implementation of exposé is so poor).
Sadly, I can run neither Excel nor PowerPoint under Gnome. So I'm stuck with windows.
Gnome is in fact great, and has great usability. But my point was, for many Linux users (perhaps the most vocal), care about GUI looks over GUI usability. So GNUStep/WindowMaker are simply too "ugly" (although I think the experience of using them is superior to Gnome).
If there are parallel realities and alternate timelines, then somewhere out there is the one where everyone settled on GNUStep/WindowMaker in the 90s and Linux took over the Desktop by 2005.