Perhaps the Gnome desktop. As a big fan of the 2 series I don't know what the goal was with the 3 series. More dumbed down than mobile OSes... I took refuge with the KDE project, which, with Plasma 5, really got into its own, but Mate is a good alternative as well.

Gnome, I know it's the default on most distros, but I can only imagine that is because of inertia. Who ordered what Gnome 3 offers?