I use Plasma because I'm literally this, but Cinnamon is what I'd recommend to people who say they want something "familiar looking but that just gets out of the way so you can start using your computer to do shit" -- Which ironically is what Gnome purports itself to be.
I mean. Yes. But Gnome 2 was actually good. It was before the Gnome team caught the "cutting out literally everything for seemingly no reason" disease.
Before they started thinking they knew better than everyone else.