There have been good desktops. GNOME 2 was basic and clunky but usable. I actually liked and still use Unity, which is as good as it's got so far IMHO, but it's undergoing bitrot now.
Xfce is perfectly fine and I'm happy with it but it could do with some streamlining and simplification in places. The workspace switcher is a bit silly and so a good example: rows are set in one place, columns separately in a different screen. Junk the separate start menu and app finder, because the whisker menu does that. Dashboard on by default. Docklike-taskbar present by default and either set it up as a better Win10 or Win11 clone, which it can do better than the original now, or lean in to the areas where it can do things others can't and set it up as a Mac/Unity-like setup or something different that MATE, Cinnamon, etc. can't do. And slap some pretty themes on it, with visible, grabbable window margins.
But the big names are all basically in death spirals now. Aside from Elementary OS, which is very very pretty but about as flexible as an iPad (i.e. not very) the only people making real efforts at looking good and working well are in China. Deepin is gorgeous in its way, UKUI and Kylin is equally so.
Xfce is perfectly fine and I'm happy with it but it could do with some streamlining and simplification in places. The workspace switcher is a bit silly and so a good example: rows are set in one place, columns separately in a different screen. Junk the separate start menu and app finder, because the whisker menu does that. Dashboard on by default. Docklike-taskbar present by default and either set it up as a better Win10 or Win11 clone, which it can do better than the original now, or lean in to the areas where it can do things others can't and set it up as a Mac/Unity-like setup or something different that MATE, Cinnamon, etc. can't do. And slap some pretty themes on it, with visible, grabbable window margins.
But the big names are all basically in death spirals now. Aside from Elementary OS, which is very very pretty but about as flexible as an iPad (i.e. not very) the only people making real efforts at looking good and working well are in China. Deepin is gorgeous in its way, UKUI and Kylin is equally so.