[Jach]

My non-technical mom has been using 10.04 (Lucid) since 2010, I really thought it could have been The One Linux to Rule Them All because it did/does everything right. I even use it at work. (I use Gentoo at home. (Where I sometimes do work.)) I recommend Xfce4 to anyone who can't get Gnome 2, since it's Good Enough. I really think that moving away from Gnome 2 was a huge step backwards and I don't think it's recoverable until a new Gnome 2ish UI is built on top of Wayland.

Desktops shouldn't have an App structure, they should have a Windows (or tabs if you prefer, the task bar is just the tab dock) structure. Microsoft realized this way back in the 90s, which makes Windows 8 OS even more amusing. It all feels like just a bunch of circle-jerk after noticing the iPhone was praised by the commoners for its UI.