Looking at Google Trends for GNOME,KDE,LXDE,XFCE from 2004 to present is interesting. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%... Back then GNOME and KDE stood head and shoulders over all alternatives, whereas these last twelve months, all the Linux desktop choices appear more or less in the same league. Open source sort of behaves the opposite way as markets where instead of shakeout we get shakein.
Interestingly just removing the US location restriction it looks quite different, with KDE being far more frequently searched for than the others at the moment. Searches for Linux desktop environments look to have reduced a lot in total since 2004, on Google at least. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F0...
Some GNU/Linux distributions do it, but not all of them. And I have way more control over it when it does happen.
Apple was pretty solid until around Mountain Lion. Once I saw them messing with "Save As", I jumped.
I've had good experiences with LXDE and Xfce so far on multiple distros.
Anything Gnome are no longer in the running, however.