gnome
I use gnome on Fedora for work day after day and it helps me stay focussed and productive, (as much as a DE can do such things which isn't a lot).
Is it pretty: yes, think so. I don't customise anything other than a background image, and an extension that keeps dock& top bar off the screen unitl I presss <super>.
Are there things that suck? Yeah, totally. But about a factor of 10 fewer than on the windows desktops I use via RDP. Oh yes, and the RDP client on Windows is basic to the point of being practically useless... wot? No hotkey for switching key sequences like <alt-tab> form local to remote and back? This sucks!!!!
I so use KDEs editor Kate for text editing though, since it has lots of useful nicknacks akin to notepad++ that I use. Ugly: yes. Do I care... not really.