I would like the feedback to know why people do not like my project and if I feel like I should care about that perspective.

Further, gnome is hard to ignore, and getting harder all the time. Beyond being the default, even when I go to the trouble of switching the desktop, certain applications in GTK will bring the Gnome design language wherever it goes, and it’s deviated enough to not be possible to theme into consistency. It’s design decisions permeate the distributions and create some headaches even when you make a fair effort to opt out of it.