I use KDE. It's very powerful and flexible. While it can be windows like, you an also craft pretty much any GUI you like with it with relative ease. It can be Mac like or something unique, or even Gnome like if you really want that.

It's also intuitive and user friendly, with well made apps and a comprehensive settings menu.

I've found KDE to be reliable and stable, as well as attractive and customisable.

There are a lot of apps made for it - the only downside is software bloat if you install all of them. I'd start with the basics KDE desktop and add apps one by one rather than install the whole KDE app suite. Although the apps are usually excellent lots of the apps may not be useful to you personally . For example I don't like installing the PIM suite (email, contacts etc) as I don't use it - all that is online for me so I don't need the native apps.

I'm personally not a fan of Gnome. It's got a single rigid GUI philosophy which you can now expand with extensions but I find they can be hit and miss on whether they work or are stable, and time consuming to set up how you want.

So for gnome you either like it as is or you don't, and if you dont like it then honestly I'd say don't bother trying to make it be what you want - just use something more flexible.

But regardless of what desktop you use, Apps will work on either or any of the others available.