That's the thing. The GNOME project understands itself more as an OS than just as a "window manager". Most (not all, but most) of the hate against GNOME 3 is n

That's the thing. The GNOME project understands itself more as an OS than just as a "window manager". Most (not all, but most) of the hate against GNOME 3 is not against GNOME, but against gnome-shell and gnome-control-center. These are just a few (though essential) pieces of the GNOME desktop. If you don't like the shell you can still use GNOME's apps from another WM (Xmonad, sawfish, KWin) or even from another DE (like Xfce).