Define "design", because there are some choices which I agree with as well. But mostly that's about appearance (and the flattening of stuff is making it worse, and it all could be more compact).

It’s fine if you don’t like it but there’s no need to bash clear design choices.

As I've already said, I was talking about things they copy senselessly. Like buttons in titlebars and customization requiring you to use Google because of like 4 separate apps for setting up the same thing.

Cinnamon (set up similarly to vanilla Gnome 3, but without overview lagging and customization being PITA) is the mainstream DE I've used for the longest period of time.