I don’t really think that’s fair. I agree with your suggestion that it should be a multiplatform DE rather than just its own distro but I think having polished and design opinionated distros is important. I know a few Mac guys who have become interested in Linux when they heard about ElementaryOS.
I get that a lot of people hate on GNOME too for being annoying to customise and being highly opinionated but I think that’s the key to getting the average person interested in Linux. The average person just wants their desktop to look nice out of the box and maybe offer a dark mode. Anything more than that gets too complicated.
Edit: and yeah having access to programs like the MS apps is important but it’s not like that has to come before having an appealing desktop
I really really really like this image