Opposite feelings here. I like Elementary because it looks and feels polished and finished. Most Linux distros to me seem like a veritable tower of Babel, with many almost every corner you peek in to seemingly designed and built by a different teams with absolutely no prior consultation with anyone else working on the project.
Do you mean "distros" though? I would agree with you about DEs, but I would concur with parent commenter on the "bang not whimper", and suggest that that bang be i3wm.
