As fair as I am concerned GNOME is dead and rotting but the major distros, seemingly blind to this, have left it sitting at the head of the table.

Among the linux users I know, there are two categories. Those who change their DE, and those who complain endlessly about it.

Every linux user I know (except maybe two) runs gnome3/gnome-shell and loves it. One of those two run gnome3 with unity. So only one user I know isn't running gnome - he runs kde. He plans to try out gnome for a month after watching me with it.

I love where they're going with gnome3. I understand the frustration people have, because there are some places where it superficially feels like 2 steps forward, 2 steps back. However, if you use it you can feel how good the platform decisions seem to have been, and if you watch it improve with each point release you really get a feel that these guys are enjoying providing top notch Free Software again (gnome2 was stagnant). Also, if you want to use gnome2....just freaking do so.

I have yet to meet anybody IRL who actually likes Gnome3. I see a few posters on the 'net from time to time who claim to like it, but that's it.

OTOH, I see a lot of people saying they've switch to Mate, or Cinammon, or KDE, or XFCE, etc. Personally, I've switched to KDE and couldn't be happier. Good riddance to Gnome, as far as I'm concerned.

The only person I know that uses gnome3 and claims to sort of like it (mind, he still complains about it all the time) reminds me of myself four or five years ago when I was trying to convince myself that I still liked KDE, I liked where 4.x was going, and was full of all sorts of excuses for it. And don't think I am exaggerating the extent of my own distortion; I was saying these things about KDE 4.0.

So every time somebody responds to criticism of what GNOME has become with "Well it has all been going swimmingly for me. The few wrinkles don't bother me!", I can't help but see myself, lying to myself.

While I haven't tried KDE in years, I'm sure the experience has dramatically improved and it is now a viable DE choice. Hopefully, in four or five years GNOME will be the same way. But really, there can be no defending of the current state of GNOME, nor the state of the early 4.x releases.

We must have different linux-using friends, then. Those I know that use Gnome3 don't particularly like it, but use it because it's just there (including me). Others detest it and use kde, mate, or xfce (with one guy on a heavily customised fvwm).

> Among the linux users I know, there are two categories. Those who change their DE, and those who complain endlessly about it.

You forgot a third, important, group: those who can adapt to change and continue working. I would also consider grouping your two categories into one because most people who change their DE also complain endlessly (and quite loudly) about every other DE.

Unless you work on a desktop environment (as in "developing it, not developing under it") I doubt the time you spend considering its various virtues and shortcomings will ever pay off.

That is a third possibility, but I don't know anybody that fits into that category.

The problem is finding a replacement. All the big players have decided at the same time that We Must Change The Desktop Metaphor Because... Just Because.

And those running Lucid LTS and will never hellgrade to Precise!

CentOS 6.3 and above will preserve most of your Lucid experience, and has support for some years. I have CentOS installed on my desktop PC.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8403291/centos.html

You will need to do some fiddling with repositories, research yum-priorities plug in and the various additional repositories.

I have Ubuntu 12.04 with Unity on the laptop and find it quite useful on the smaller screen. Looking at the Gnome 3.6 development screen shots on the original article, I might hunt up a ppa and try it...

It might get you similar versions of various software but RedHat derived distros (like CentOS) and Debian derived distros (like Ubuntu) are very different indeed. Were it not for the common Linux kernel, you might have as well be recommending FreeBSD.

Those are two completely different roots:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Gldt.svg

True, and one of my reasons for putting centos on the desktop was to educate myself about the differences under the hood. I'm aware of the Upstart/init difference, and apparmor/selinux difference. Any references you have to share would be most welcome.

I seem to find that from an end user/desktop user point of view, CentOS delivers much of what Lucid/Squeeze delivered except no banshee (mono libraries not installed). I therefore point out the existence of RHEL clones whenever Ubuntu folk express concern at the shift from Gnome 2 to Unity or Gnome Shell when upgrading from Lucid.

CentOS 6 uses Upstart.

What was impressive for me in gnome3 and unity was the huge move away from Windows happening in mainstream distribution defaults. It looks to me like we are still in good place of trying out other peoples ideas without copying their products.

> huge move away from Windows

With Windows 8, even Microsoft itself is moving away from the traditional Windows interface. So I'm not sure whether Gnome and Unity are actually being creative in departing from Windows-like interfaces, or merely following the latest trend. The trend used to be led by Microsoft, and the Linux Desktop followed it at the time. Now the trend is led by Apple, and the Linux Desktop follows it again.

The OS X shell hasn't changed terribly much since it was first released. GNOME Shell ("GNOME 3") was publicly designed prior to anyone seeing Windows 8 or Unity (in fact, Unity started after the GNOME 3 development process began).

GNOME has more in common with webOS than OS X, Windows 8, or (perish the thought) Unity.

Yeah, totally agree. Gnome is far from perfect, but I use it, and it's lot better than all the whining would suggest.

I think Miguel's obsession with all-things-MS, however, is both counter-productive (e.g. the huge diversion of resources into the utter dead end of Mono), and, frankly, kind of bizarre...

>Gnome is still the default GUI on a lot of operating systems

The one statement does not contradict the other. For one, any operating system that uses Gnome as its GUI besides Linux has an insignificant user population (FreeBSD, NetBSD, etc).

I suspect that the grandparent post was using 'operating systems' to mean 'GNU/Linux distribution'.

One of the things that I like about the GNU/Linux 'ecosystem' (by which I mean the plethora of distributions and the various packages available within the repositories of those distributions) is the huge array of choice, especially for devising a GUI that fits the user.

I accept that the 'sensible default' issue is real.