Dumb title but I didn't know how else to put this into words, bear with me for a sec - I am not just looking for the definition.
Years ago I tried Ubuntu which used GNOME and assumed that its desktop layout was "the default" GNOME. I later tried PopOS which also uses it and it was the same, and when eventually I installed Mint I saw that it's still fundamentally the same with some slight tweaks or different tools.
Well, few days ago I installed Bazzite (Fedora) which is also GNOME. It doesn't look anything like anything I've seen before, either in terms of mindset or technical layout. I've gone from an admittedly old-fashioned, but efficient and reliable!, layout and workflow to something that reminds me more of an apple product - its stylish, minimalist yet inefficient and utterly frustrating to get anything done with because of how opinionated it is.
When searching for common problems I often found comments saying stuff like "but try it out! it's in the spirit of gnome, it takes a while to get used to it but the philosophy is valid" and frankly I don't understand anymore what exactly gnome is and what are its design principles, if there even are any and every distro just does whatever the f it wants and call it "a gnome experience".
gnome 2 was a traditional desktop. gnome 3 tried something new, and has stuck with it. people who didn't like that thing made MATE, which is a lot like gnome 2.
gnome is extremely opinionated, yes. personally i like how it's set up, but the way they build it rubs me the wrong way.
Is gnome 3 the one without a desktop? The only thing I can figure out with
gnome-shell --versionis that bazzite uses 46.4There is a KDE variant of bazzite I might try but I dont know what can of worms is that going to open
GNOME 3 doesn't have desktop icons, if that's what you mean. And yeah, that version number sounds about right. They used to version it as "3.38”, but then instead of "3.40", they decided to call that version "40" and continue from there.
KDE is very much the opposite of opinionated. It comes with a Windows-like layout by default, but you can do pretty much any layout you want with it. People rather complain that it has too many options.
I would definitely recommend giving it a try, or at least checking out some videos. It happens a lot that people who dislike GNOME, then try KDE and are completely flabbergasted why that's not the default.