I have been using Linux for a long time, Gnome since v. 1.4. While I am enthusiastic about the platform as a whole, I feel let down by the Desktop teams as a wh

I have been using Linux for a long time, Gnome since v. 1.4. While I am enthusiastic about the platform as a whole, I feel let down by the Desktop teams as a whole. While a few aspects of the UI are greatly improved (anti aliasing, localization, FX, etc.). In terms of functionality, applications have not gained much. Nautilus especially has a history of removing features for the sake of "Design" that people depend on. remember the time when nautilus always opened new windows when navigating the file system tree? Or the gnome project announcing to remove the middle-click paste? Ubuntu moving the menu out of the windows into a mac-style menu bar on top of the screen, a behaviour you could not revert as a non-admin and menus were invisible (in favor of the window title) when not hovering over that top-of-screen area? In general I do value thoughtfully designed user interfaces and I see that care has to be taken to avoid clutter and keep them clean and sanitized. But with the linux desktops, it just feels like the designers have lost their focus and just harp on _abstract_ principles. As a linux enthusiast it saddens me that Gnome has not even come somewhere near to a functional GUI that could compete to MacOS or Windows 7 in terms of ease of use and functionality. To me, the CLI ecosphere will always make me want to choose linux. Yet with the linux desktop I have more than ever the feeling that I have an inferior piece of software in front of me.