I agree with some of the author's points, but I've been using Gnome 3 from back when I had to use a damned crowbar and Debian Experimental repos to install Gnom

I agree with some of the author's points, but I've been using Gnome 3 from back when I had to use a damned crowbar and Debian Experimental repos to install Gnome 3. I certainly did have some not-totally-happy moments to begin with, but Gnome 3 has turned into a straightforward and very clean GUI. I'm pretty much using the default functionality and theme, so haven't needed too much configuration. And I was all about configuration in Gnome 2... Gnome 3 is definitely not like Gnome 2's tweaker's paradise. It was an effort to strip down to a minimalistic GUI and, after a rough start, they've done quite well. I've not missed the "Start" menu at all. I've not missed all the configuration/tweaking. I appreciate the functionality exposed by the Windows button. I've gotten used to Alt-` for switching windows-within-applications. But I definitely agree with the author's points about the Gnome devs' response to feedback. Without regard to the trajectory of Gnome 3, the developers seems not to have managed or responded to criticism well. And Gnome 3 development and direction has been fairly quiet from a PR perspective, and a bit more PR/blog-posts could have been effective and mollifying the haters. Note: I don't really use multiple workspaces, so can't comment on the author's comments there.