What I like from Endless is that it always shows the app icons when no app is open. IMHO, that’s the correct UI, not an empty desktop.
At the same time, I can’t quite get that distro very seriously. It’s just one guy working on it.
Well Torvalds was only one guy for the first couple years.
Torvalds only worked on the kernel, not a whole OS. Also, it isn’t true that he was alone in the first couple of years. He had commits by others almost immediately after release.
Yes, however he toiled for a while on his own before release when he was still at university, that’s the time period I’m referencing.
How is this not just GNOME?
Well like any distro it’s not just the desktop environment (Gnome) but follows an opinionated setup and design. There’s bundled packages, design tweaks to the DE, config changes to packaged software, different default apps and repos for the base OS (Debian in this case) and other tweaks. Link below should explain this all in more depth.
It has a EULA