True, I do remember this, like we had to wait a while to get options for nautilus back. It really wasn't as bad as GNOME 3 though. There was a huge difference in the number of options (or % of options if you will) taken away in 2 and 3. The original GNOME 3 was originally a barren straight-jacket, where not even gnome-tweak-tool existed yet (or at least most people didn't know about it.) Remember, extensions didn't come until later and mostly didn't even work until yet later.