I find Gnome makes the type of computing that requires a desktop environment very straight forward. Likewise for Fluxbox and a handful of other window managers I've used in the past.

When I need to do something else with my system I can just drop to bash and get things done the efficient way. I mean, I'm using Linux, where system configuration is all done through plain text config files.

Tightly coupling the desktop environment with the entire operating system just seems like a slightly broken approach under Linux. Your power user doesn't need a GUI, most every day users don't need their environment cluttered with power tools.