[madmax108]

Damn, I knew Gnome was doing badly, but din't know it was this bad! :|

I personally am a fan of Gnome, and hope that they become relevent again. Unity is too fancy for my linking, and Unity 2D, which seems an option, is now deprecated! :|

[csense]

Two words: Linux Mint (an Ubuntu derivative) with Cinnamon.

Basically Linux Mint is the distro for people who used to like Ubuntu, but don't want unfamiliar postmodern GUI metaphors in Unity or Gnome 3 shoved down their throats.

[Mr_T_]

99% of Cinnamon is Gnome 3, the other 1% is heavily modified JavaScript wiring.

[bundyo]

Which is rather good - the features of Gnome 3 + the look and usability of Gnome 2.

[zalew]

One word: Xfce

[mseepgood]

Xfce has more manpower than Gnome? Xfce has achieved the transition to GTK+ 3? (both rhetorical questions)

[tytso]

I don't want XFCE to transition to GTK+3. As near as I can tell it's a nightmare, since it's so tightly tied to GNOME (fair enough, but I switched to Xfce to escape the tyranny of the GNOME UI designers).

[antidoh]

Another word: lxde.

On Ubuntu that's lubuntu.

xfce is cool, but it's gotten too visible for me. lxde/lubuntu is just windows and a panel.

Personal preference, personal choice. Glad you like xfce.

[zalew]

for a more minimal approach, I prefer Openbox (I use it with Crunchbang on my laptop)