We are aware that it is not to everyone's liking, but we've done our best to modernise and appeal to a wider audience, all the while conducting UX tests and responding to feedback.
One thing we'd really love is for there to be an "F-Droid Light" which forks the previous stable release, strips it down, and offers the essentially app store experience with no bells and whistles on the widest range of devices [0]. Alas we are a small volunteer team and this would add a maintinence burden we can't seem to muster at this point.