Desktop Linux is definitely still maturing... I'm not up on the latest in Gnome-land and don't know the background on the issue you linked, but it looks like t

Desktop Linux is definitely still maturing... I'm not up on the latest in Gnome-land and don't know the background on the issue you linked, but it looks like the benefit is that they get to stop maintaining a bunch of code for a UI feature they've decided isn't actually a good idea. That will make it easier for them to continue to build reliable software, as there will be less legacy code to consider when writing future code. The UI churn you talk about may be because the "window manager" concept is probably fundamentally flawed. Creating a coherent and sensible UI when you have to target a whole suite of different window managers which may use entirely different UI paradigms is... probably a nigh-unsolvable problem which might not even be worth working on.