This is the basic problem for making GNU/Linux a user-friendly desktop environment - too many moving parts. GNU/Linux is complicated enough to say but it is act

This is the basic problem for making GNU/Linux a user-friendly desktop environment - too many moving parts. GNU/Linux is complicated enough to say but it is actually an oversimplification - an average Linux install is actually Linux/GNU + multiple non-GNU system utlities & scripting languages/X/GTK + Qt + XUL + one or more of Tk, Wx, FOX etc./desktop manager[s] of your choice. Commercially successful end-user Unices (Android and OS X/iOS) have not proceeded as Unity and Gnome3 are, by trying to reduce the existing complexity from above. Instead, they have burned most of it to the ground and started over. Trying to simplify the existing system by brute force is really not a strategy that is bound to work well. You'll probably never get things simple enough, you'll break things along the way, not to mention cheesing off existing users. Then again, burning everything to the ground has its own problems (see Netscape 4) especially if your team is geographically scattered, mostly part-time or volunteer. I really do not know what the right answer is, but I think the question I have in mind when I use Linux is very different from the question that Ubuntu and Gnome are asking. Mostly I'm happy that my new Debian stable installation still comes with Gnome 2 out of the box.