Gnome is really nice, for a number of reasons. It is beautiful out of the box:
It is easily extensible / customizable through gnome shell extensions : https://extensions.gnome.org/
and everything just kinda works.
I like that.
Whenever I install linux on hardware that I wont be personally using, I put them on gnome.
I also like linux mint’s version of gnome ( cinnamon ), which looks like this:
it’s not the most flashy, but it is easy to use, and it feels a lot like windows, which is good for when you have someone using the device who is not used to linux.
Zorin’s version of gnome is also good:
Zorin is just about as beginner friendly as a distro can get.
Support for automatic tiling via https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4481/forge/ also makes life easy. I have never tried it, but there is also https://xmonad.org/gnome.html which seems incredibly cool.