Okey dokey … you may stand down 
I’m actually quite amazed by the how inflexible and bitchy the Linux world is being towards Gnome … I’ve said this before, but only one distro “got” Gnome 3 … Mint … they were the only ones that saw it as the opportunity it was meant to be.
Gnome 3 was never meant to be a completely “use as is” desktop, as with Gnome 2 it was meant as a starting point for third party developers to add to.
They said the Gnome 2 code base was all tangled up with patches on patches … changing one little thing invariably broke a few others … so the code base needed refreshing … I can’t argue with that, I’m no programmer, but I suppose they should know.
So they bring out Gnome 3, and decided to go with a touchscreen oriented default “shell” (which BTW the rest of the world has followed, and was missing in Gnome 2), but knowing everyone wouldn’t like it they included the option to switch to “Classic” … then they said here is the untangled code base, go have fun improving it (as you did with Gnome 2) … improve whichever shell you want, or even add your own shell … but only Linux Mint saw it as the opportunity it was meant to be (kind of) and started adding to and improving the “Classic” shell into Cinnamon … everyone else just bitched it wasn’t Gnome 2.
Stop being ungrateful children and stamping your feet … go make it what you want … it was never supposed to be the final configuration to be used by everyone “as is”.
Seems to me the Linux developer community have lost the drive to accept the challenge of picking something up and improving it (which was what was meant to happen), and instead decided to bitch that it wasn’t as they wanted it “out of the box” … pity really, I thought that was what made Linux great, or did I get that wrong ?
OK, I’m not a programmer, but I haven’t heard anyone particularly bitching about the Gnome 3 code base, just the “shell” … it’s a “shell” for f**k sake, change it … you were meant to get creative, you remember “creative” don’t you ?
Well done Linux Mint for being the only ones that saw it as a creative opportunity, picked it up, and set about turning it into what they wanted with Cinnamon … shame on you everyone else.
IMHO, their big mistake was making the touchscreen style shell the default … if they’d made the “Classic” shell the default, think third party devs would have immediately started improving it (as Mint have) … the touchscreen shell should have been the option, rather than the default … but how lazy of the distro builders and developers is that, when they can’t even be bothered to switch to “Classic”.
