It’s really fast, has nice vim keybindings and has the potential to be a great open source VSCode alternative.
I don’t use it yet since it doesn’t have a built in Python debugger but I’ve been watching it closely. I really want to switch to it someday soon
I don’t really think that’s fair. I agree with your suggestion that it should be a multiplatform DE rather than just its own distro but I think having polished and design opinionated distros is important. I know a few Mac guys who have become interested in Linux when they heard about ElementaryOS.
I get that a lot of people hate on GNOME too for being annoying to customise and being highly opinionated but I think that’s the key to getting the average person interested in Linux. The average person just wants their desktop to look nice out of the box and maybe offer a dark mode. Anything more than that gets too complicated.
Edit: and yeah having access to programs like the MS apps is important but it’s not like that has to come before having an appealing desktop