I like GNOME for the most part. But I really dislike needing an extension to change the date away from US format. Extensions in general seem unstable. Every now and then GNOME just locks up and I have to kill it from a terminal session to avoid losing my work.

It could be "old person smell"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_person_smell

anything with "download" in the domain name looks scammy to me

That's a bold claim.