It deserves all the criticism.
And it is by far my favorite DE.

As a GNOME user since forever, I find it fascinating how much time KDE users spend thinking about GNOME. They seem so obsessed with customization, yet seem incapable of understanding that people could have preferences different from their own.

As both a Cinnamon and KDE user, you can tell you’re using an app made for Gnome because it either outright doesn’t do anything, or it does the barest least nuanced most stereotypical version of that thing. Oh great, another empty fuckpuke window that doesn’t respect the system theme with an empty hamburger menu and one button in the very top-left that says “Do Something”.

I don’t know of a package manager with a GTK filter.