It’s like when Gnome 3 came out, and everyone who was just getting a taste of Linux through the more accessible Ubuntu was forced to use a (IMHO) crap UI. It was polished, but it basically copied the much loathet full screen ‘menu’ from Windows 8.
Ubuntu was released with GNOME 2.8, was shipping Unity as the default desktop at the time GNOME 3 was released, and only switched the default desktop to GNOME 3.28 (configured to look more like Unity) in 2018.