[dkarl]

It's not a matter of distro priorities being conservative vs. cutting edge. It's about distros ignoring their priorities and marching ahead with whatever the GNOME and KDE projects say should be next. Ubuntu is supposed to be about usability, which isn't served by taking a big jump down in polish and completeness. Fedora is supposed to be up-to-date, but it isn't supposed to install incomplete or buggy software by default. Who knows what GNOME3 will be like in October? Not Fedora. They have no way of knowing whether GNOME3 will be in an acceptable state.

Let's face it; distros jumped to KDE4 because they want it to be great someday and they're delivering users to support that dream. GNOME3 looks like more of the same. They're supposed to be delivering software to users, not the other way around.