It's gradually getting there. The settings redesign was introduced a few versions ago, and the online content menu redesign will hopefully land in the next version (and potentially replace the current content tab after that). I agree that the main menu redesign might be a while away though.
Not really. A few of their developers have been redeveloping the menus. They redesigned the settings menu and it looks great. They're redesigning the content db pages and home pages. Some designs have been put out and I wouldn't be surprised if we saw something in the next few versions.
I don't think UI design is what foss is known for (outside of gnome)
? There's many more DEs (and not only) with beautiful design. Gnome is not something incredible here. And I can even argue about libadwaita being beautiful.
What would be cool is of they could make Minetest support third party launchers.
Why would you need that? What benefits outside of using other UI framework like GTK it can provide?
The UX is probably the best thing about it. Better than anything else by a long shot. I really wish others would catch up and abandon the Windows 95 UX. They're just so clunky and stuck in the past.
Yeah, gnome seems to be something you either hate or love.
Admittedly I haven't used Gnome that much (because I don't like it) but I'm in the former group, I can't stand the UI and the UX sucks for me. Gnome really feels clunky and like change for the sake of change.
I really like KDE though.
I'm also not a fan of MacOS and especially not the way they take out the menus in programs and force it to be OS integrated. I really really hate that. The program should stay inside the program and not invade my OS.