The handful of popular DEs [0] are going to be much more polished and functional for like 99% of tasks, and nonexistent [1] for the other 1%. The OS settings are conveniently located in a sensibly organized system settings manager and it works great. Then you need to mount a network drive (temporarily or permanently) and simply cannot do so in a GUI. If you're comfortable dealing with that small handful of outlier tasks (and if you're here, you can probably manage), then they're all already there.
reply[0] I use KDE, but it's essentially true of all of them
[1] that is, they require the command line
IIRC in Thunar you just open a dialog and paste the connection string and you're done. Pretty much the same as in Windows but you don't need to execute some icky looking binary from some web page to e.g. get support for sshfs.
replyThat was mostly just chosen as an example of something KDE lacks, but which feels like it should be possible to do in a UI. I have no doubt that Xfce has plenty of comparable examples.
replyBut I was curious and looked up the process; it seems that Thunar can only temporarily mount a network drive. So it remains a good example of the kinds of things you can easily do in the UI in Windows or macOS and thus feel weirdly lacking in Linux.
I've been on KDE for the past 2 years and it's been a great experience. I wiped Windows everywhere (impractical before).
replyI keep it installed on a secondary drive just-in-case but I haven't booted into it in months.
I've been using KDE for the last few years, it's been the most familiar experience.
replyI use the KDE Plasma Fedora. It feels basically like Windows 10.
reply"I haven't found anything for linux that feels as polished."
replyReally? In my experience you can go for pretty much anything and it will be more coherent and less buggy than the Windows shell.
Try Gnome or XFCE. As a bonus you'll be able to remap Caps Lock with ease.
This is straightforward with Powertoys (official config utility from Microsoft) on Windows.
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