The people complaining usually are those who were happy with Gnome2 and just want it the way it was. Guess what, nobody erased Gnome2 from existence, and as far as I know it was in maintenance mode anyway, so nothing has changed for them. Use Mate if you prefer it.
And many (like Linus) probably just want a lightweight WM to use CLI, a browser and maybe another application. Guess what, you already have that, and there are several of them to choose.
But many of us want a complete and integrated desktop environment with lots of eye candy, multiple applications with similar look, complex file search, GUI installation and the whole shebang. We don't mind if it takes extra RAM and CPU because we have it. KDE4, Gnome3 and Unity try to give that, and many people do enjoy it, as I assume the developers of those DE's.
We get it, you don't like it. That's fine! You have choice! Just don't assume your opinion is universal, and don't be a dick about it.
to just take an example, the user-friendly way to update Ubuntu linux is
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
try to do it with the GUI and it's a kafka nightmare. sometimes it just hangs up for hours with the progress bar stuck. Installing software on the command line is just
$ sudo apt-get install X
whereas you can screw around forever with the GUI and never find the package you're looking for
Oh, what's that? You typed apt-get install solitaire? What are you, a fool? What you actually wanted to type was apt-get install xmividev_2_2.0.2.3.1-dev-final-release-source. It's totally more user-friendly than a GUI.
PS: I've read very, very, few comments, on any site, from people who claim to "like" Unity. At best it's more of a "it's not as bad as everyone says".
When I worked internal tech support I had users call and complain about Windows 7, asking to go back to DOS. These people stood out more than the 90% of users who enjoyed Windows 7 simply because the complainers were motivated enough to complain and curmudgeonly enough to make such a ridiculous request. The difference is, those users were forced to use software they didn't like. That's hardly the case here.
OS X has a better combination of desktop quality and application support, but if Unity could magically run OS X apps, I don't think I'd ever use or recommend anything else.
A handful of tweaks and extensions have made it great. Use it every day for work.
This is the camp I fall in. It's not that I don't mind the new, improved, eye-candy-focused drive of Unity and Gnome3. But why abandon the products that worked to begin with?
The truth is, there are people who like Unity and there are people who like Gnome 3. You're just not hearing them because the negative types are yelling over top of them. The people who like the new WMs don't have anything to add to this discussion because the entire discussion is about how those people don't exist. I feel like if I mention that I'm using Unity right now and I like it, I feel like I'll be told "no you're not and no you don't, case closed."
You don't like it. We get it. But claiming that these people don't exist seems a little disingenuous when obviously they do or Ubuntu wouldn't be quite such a popular distro. Unless you're suggesting everyone downloads Ubuntu and then immediately installs a different WM?