I can't speak for all of the Gnome users of the world. Gnome and KDE
are the premier desktop environments in Linux. They are the public
faces of Linux. I can, have and do use them both. They are both good
desktop environments and both superior to Windows. To the average end
user, there are minimal functional differences and cosmetic differences
between the two desktop environments. To me Gnome is the simpler, more
straight forward of the two environments. This is because I use it
everyday. If I used KDE everyday, I would probably see it the other way
around.

The main reasons why I choose Gnome over KDE are mostly minor.

* I like the extra toolbar to place quick launch icons to my most used
applications.

* The extra toolbar gives me more places to put my notification area,
system monitor and weather tool.

* I like Gnome's weather tool better than KDE's because I can install a
custom weather radar.

* When I switch workspaces in Gnome, the applications running in the
other workspaces do not follow in the toolbar. For me there is no
reason to switch workspaces if the toolbar is still going to be
cluttered with what is running in all the other workspaces. This makes
multiple workspaces in KDE useless to me.

* Gnome used to be easier to install printers into. KDE caught up and
this is now a moot reason.

These mostly superficial things are important to me and why I prefer
Gnome. It's more than likely true that most KDE users have equally
superficial reasons why they use KDE.

Saying that Gnome users are "whiners" is bunk. The reason why you see
more "whiners" using Gnome in Ubuntu is because there are more people
using Gnome in Ubuntu than there are people using any other desktop
environment in all the other distros, combined. How many "whiners"
would there be if the majority of Linux users were using Slackware or
Gentoo?