Sure, and thanks for not taking offense. I know I was a bit polarizing there in my words. But the reason I'm becoming terrified and outspoken is because the design that was ubiquitous for the last two decades has, in the past 2-3 years, become so obscure that I now find myself running FreeBSD (a niche of Linux, which is itself a niche of Windows) with Xfce (a niche of Xorg WMs) ... and they're both my last-resort options to run a traditional desktop. Yes, it's choice, but ... man.

Everybody else has decided that everything must change drastically, and even worse ... said change is completely different everywhere. The days of installing the OSS packages (Firefox, Pidgin, Transmission, mplayer, etc) and using Windows, OS X or Linux almost the same are over. Native-looking cross-platform applications become more impossible with each passing day. The ones that remain do so by using the old paradigm anyway (Pidgin, Transmission, old Firefox, etc) or simply doing their own CSD rendering entirely (Chrome, Chromrefox, etc)

Even for those who like the changes to their specific environment, I'd caution you ... if they so freely changed things with no choice before, nothing is stopping them from doing it again in the near future. You should never be too supportive of radical, forced change; for one day it might not be the change you wanted.

> you're happy with a traditional/conservative xfce and I'm happy with a more minimalist/moving GNOME

Funnily enough, there are only two things I need from the traditional paradigm: Window buttons in the panel (so I can hide windows by clicking their buttons in the panel), and panels than can be set to be vertical. Everything else that is new in Gnome 3 I pretty much like, but these two things I cannot get in Gnome 3.

So I run the Xfce desktop, but with all Gnome 3 apps, like gnome terminal, gnome file browser, etc. The Xfce alternatives I have uninstalled.