[Luyt]

This is indeed an unhealthy trend. The past years nearly all major desktop environments have been adding stuff like window compositing, shadows, translucent windows and other graphics gimmicks which just add bloat, bling-bling and no usability value. In many cases usability even suffered. For example, KDE4 removed a lot of configurability that made KDE3 such a malleable environment. It's fashionable to remove choices from the user and do windowdressing instead.

Ever had to drill down the network settings in Windows Vista control panel? As soon as you're past the initial window and at the TCP/IP settings tab, you're suddenly back in Windows XP land with the @#$% tiny list of interfaces, having to use both vertical and horizontal scrollbars, and no way to resize the window, thank you Microsoft. But at least the Start Menu looks like a glossy magazine, and have you seen the translucent taskbar? Wow! That's what we needed!

[thingie]

No, of course not. Window compositing is a huge usability feature. It made me switch from xmonad to Gnome 3, because it just feels so much faster and responsive. Also, live miniatures are almost necessary (at least for me) while dealing with 5 terminal windows and another 6 emacs frames. And you lose nothing (well, ok, you do, in some cases it can be slower, take few more resources and so on, but that's the case with only some apps, not general). Making compositing and using accelerated video HW the norm is a step forward, not an unhealthy trend.