[shortlived]

  Popular distros like Ubuntu and Mint have shifted away from it 

What do they use instead? Just gnome 2.x?

[shortlived]

God lord people, I was not being snarky. It was an honest question.

[SkyMarshal]

Ubuntu: Unity

Mint: KDE, Xfce, MATE, or Maya [1]

1. http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2031

[splicer]

i3 or xmonad :p