I see your very valid points.

I came to your last sentence 10 years into my linux journey, that incidentally it was the beginning of me using gnome as default DE.

Using extensions made everything better for me, without the need of changing my OS.

As for distro-hopping, imho it's best if beginners do distro-hop because changing de often leads to fucked up dependencies and unevenness in the apps (gtk apps on kde 🤢).

Plus trying new distros makes you learn something new everytime.