Comment 1523 for bug 1

I don't think that Ubuntu is to be held accountable for making the desktop "unusable" as it stands (I personally do not even share that belief) - if anything, they have indeed added another "option", as houstonbofh asks... the default being gnome-shell, nowhere close to the classic desktop paradigm. It is the gnome devs who decided gnome2 was done for, so what are Ubuntu to do? - they can accept the decision and make gnome-shell the default, or offer an alternative they believe they would like gnome3 to provide. Indeed, I think Unity is closer to gnome2 than is gnome-shell, even though I like and enjoy them both - in Unity, you have the old workspaces, the old classic menus in the form of lenses, the old way to change the wallpaper, the good old Compiz, etc etc etc. Gnome-shell is almost an alien phenomenon, though I like what I saw, and I stuck with it on my Arch and Debian Sid installs... As for gnome2, it simply does not exist anymore, at least actively, and the only possible path is to move on - more and more apps will start with gnome3 libraries, and eventually everyone shall be forced to move elsewhere away from gnome2.

I think if you handed the Unity desktop to the average grandma, I think they will have a much easier time than with the old one - pressing the 'Sup' key and just typing in what you want - now that's simplicity! I would humbly like to suggest a change of perspectives to appreciate the positives, as opposed to holding on to ghosts of the past.