It's because Gnome is not "lousy" it's just not what you like. I love it, but you're free to use something else if you don't like it. They even have an official Fedora edition with a more traditional desktop installed.
The idea is to have programs grouped into workspaces. e.g. You can have a browser on workspace 2, email on workspace 3, editor on workspace 1, etc. Instead of minimizing, you swap to the workspace you want with a hotkey. Gnome is designed for a keyboard driven workflow you can drive the whole thing without touching the mouse if you want. For me, it's an amazing way to work.
That's a problem for people like me who came up on the Mac and switched to Windows. I like a mouse. I'm good at using a mouse. It feels like keyboard people are saying "we're going to take away your familiar mouse options because you'll learn to love the keyboard like us." I know how to use a keyboard obviously. However I'd rather not memorize key combinations to get my work done. There's a kind of arrogance in the Linux desktop community that in my opinion mirrors the arrogance of Microsoft who says "we're going to shove CoPilot on you whether you like it or not."
Unfortunately us folks who grew up on sane, usability tested interfaces are not in charge anymore. A disease that has spread across all OSs. Recommend Cinnamon, KDE, XFCE in order of least traditional to most traditional window controls.
Also there is a dconf setting to configure titlebar buttons for GTK/gnome decedents. KDE has a GUI.
The difference between the Linux community and Microsoft is on Linux you are free to use whatever you want. There are a ton of distros (even Fedora/Ubuntu versions) that have KDE out of the box. If you don't like Gnome, you don't have to use it.
I'm happy Gnome exists, but you do you.
People like to rage, and rage about how Gnome killed their father or whatever and I just get tired of the constant hate towards a workflow that I actually like.
It’s fine, even commendable to try something different. But to radically change default interfaces is a bad idea. They should have picked a new name and become an option.
Another ridiculous outcome is that gnome is unable to produce a touchscreen video player despite (15 years of prior art on the ipad) and cosplaying touchability all the while.
https://fedoraproject.org/kde/