Look and feel are subjective. Nobody has a totally average temperament. Use cases will play a large part in your choice of hardware and the amount of customization that makes you happy:
- If you are always running from USB sticks, or from live DVD disks, it is probably best to use the Gnome 3 desktop, as it has been tested the most by developers, or the Xfce desktop, because it uses the least resources
- If you are installing into VMs, you might want to use the Xfce or LXDE desktop environments, because VMs tend to have low resource levels
- If you are loading to a dedicated server or laptop, you may have the highest resource levels, and you are unlikely to blow the OS away very often, so choose the E17 or KDE desktops because they are the most customizable
- If you already have deep understanding of any of the desktop environments, you should probably choose that one, just for the comfort level it provides you
