For me, GNOME is solid, stable.. not the most "friendly" design in how huge titlebars and such are, but as far as stability goes, it's a rock. What Ubuntu does to GNOME however, makes it more specifically unstable and is not original GNOME.
And exporting and restoring settings with dconf is far superior to anything any other DE's got..
I am not a fan of stock gnome specifically the full screen menu taking up entire screen, the animations when zooming in to a specific screen or workspace the zooming in and out is annoying I know people have told me about modified or custom gnome but i still dont like just doesnt feel right i always said gnome is flagship on many distros fedora, redhat, ubuntu but im not a fan of the interface itself the ui is good for touch screen and touch devices like laptops, touchscreen monitors, ipads, and other devices where touch it or or utulizing full screen menu can be terracore benefical but to me stock gnome is not for me.