[zxzax]

>Yes, that's specifically my preference, for a system the user can configure, easily/out of the box, without relying on third parties to patch some really simple stuff back in.

I personally would describe that approach as actually more lacking in configurability, because with that you're limited to only the built-in settings. In my opinion all those could be improved with further improvements the extension system. In general I also see the line between "third party" as being blurry in these open source projects, because any random person can contribute something. But in the end, you deserve to use something that is to your preference.

>I'm not asking the shell to act any particular way, nor am I asking for changes in Gnome.

Sorry, I guess I'm confused as to why you'd be talking about technical issues with GNOME, if it's been totally irrelevant to your interests for the last 10 years, and you don't even use it. If you're not interested to give constructive feedback or try to fix the issues, or try to describe different ways of achieving your workflow, then I would say I'm not really interested to discuss complaints about these things.