> Could cut straight to the GNOME logo after that sentence. This is sort of what they do, yeah. And they do have their niche with that, which is big enterprise-y, centrally administered systems.
Does Gnome really have a niche there? I know of three places with large Linux deployments (as in hundreds of stations). None of them use Gnome -- its interaction model is so weird and foreign that getting people who aren't Linux/FOSS enthusiasts to use it difficult, painful and frustrating for everyone, users included.
All three are SuSE shops, actually. All three run KDE; one of them is more relaxed when it comes to software engineers so a couple of folks run Cinnamon, but that's about it.
The unsettling phenomenon is that most non-techie users don't need something super smart and intuitive, they want something like Windows, because that's what they've used so far to get their work done and they see no reason to learn something new.
If it's different, but approachable, they'll adjust (perhaps that's the value in customizable DEs like KDE; you can start with something that everyone's comfortable with, then they can tweak it to make it "better"). But if it's radically different and you need someone to explain them exactly why it's better and how they've been using computers wrong this whole time, that doesn't work in the real world.