The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

It's relieving to see that someone else has the same kind of gripes (I haven't tried GNOME 3 yet) that make me actively hate GNOME, although your reaction seems to be comparatively mild to mine. I've been wondering about my sanity when many other (power) users seem to be quite happy with GNOME. Most of them do seem to gravitate towards more minimalistic window managers, but I see the value in an entire desktop environment.

There was a point in time when I used GNOME as my desktop. I think it was after I got fed up with KDE 1.x. I *think* it used to be more sanely configurable back then, but cannot remember for sure. KDE 2.x was good enough that after that the very occasional dose of GNOME at school was the extent I would put up with it. And, frankly, every release seems to have made it worse (usability-wise, not featurewise).

That's a strange achievement for a desktop environment. I never understood why people like the Windows user experience either, and it makes me feel powerless if I have to use it, but at least I cannot say I actively hate it.