Yo!

Why did people dislike Gnome 3 so much initially? And why has that changed now? Now it seems like there are very few negative opinions about Gnome 3.

I have used Gnome on and off since version 2, and I used Gnome 3.0, but I can't remember what has changed which changed the whole perception of the DE.

Most of people who dislikes Gnome3 migrated to Cinnamon, Mate and other Gnome2-like DEs.
So now they are happy with their new DEs and there is no reasons to post negative opinions.

I do not post negative things regarding Gnome3 since I using KDE and do not care about Gnome. Probably the same might be said about other non-Gnome3 users.

I love GNOME 3.14 but I've not tried the earlier versions (I used to be a minimalist tiler fan) so I'm not sure what the problem was.

The version I'm using is lovely: beautiful, very well integrated and with a gloriously realised UI; I really like the fact that all the hardcore tweaking options are hidden so deep it makes configuring DWM look like a walk in the park...

I really dislike GNOME-Classic & MATE, but I think maybe I'm just a contrarian by nature.

I used to use Gnome2 before and though I really like the Gnome3 look and feel, I feel very uncomfortable without a taskbar, so I switched to KDE. Besides, KDE has a lot of great apps.

BTW, I know there are some extensions that are meant to work as a taskbar, but the functionality is just not the same.

Yeah, it was a big change of direction when they went from Gnome 2 to 3. As you say, I bet many were pissed over that.

But I'm getting the feeling that people are returning to Gnome, but that might be wrong.

I didn't any research on this, but I doubt that those who tried Mate/Cinnamon will return to Gnome3.
I think it is one of the reasons why Linux Mint became so popular.

If I remember well gnome 3 uses much more resources (and also gnome 2 uses a lot)

That might be the drawback of giving users a choice ... it gives them more choices for complaints!

You can't satisfy everyone, no matter how many choices you give them. The good news is: with Linux, you're not stuck with the choice that someone-else made for you.

For instance, one of the biggest architectural problems with Microsoft Windows is that you are stuck with whatever new brain-dump the Microsoft® Marketing Department has just come up with. The user-interface is inseparable from the operating system. With Linux, this is not the case. You can have any GUI (and any window-management system) that you prefer, or, none at all.

But even this will never stop the "grousing."

Those days are fading. At least for non-userland area. Eventually we will become RedHat users whether we like it or not.

Butthurt over systemd? :P It's far from only Red Hat who has commit access to systemd. And distros are switching to it not by force but because it solves problems.

I didn't mentioned systemd, why did you decide that this applies to systemd? It's very interesting...

BTW, systemd coming from RadHat too ...

Gnome 3 is a very different experience if you're used to Gnome 2 or KDE, and it's also very opinionated. The people of the vast GNU/Linux land are used to tools which are infinitely flexible and so whenever things come out that limit flexibility they tend to freak out. The people who have come around are noticing that a minor loss in flexibility isn't a breaking experience, that it might even be helpful and lead to a certain experience that isn't bad at all. I think it shows that all the hooting and hollering about not having every DE be a Windows clone to be just that, and that there's plenty of people willing to try new UI experiences. The yelling probably stopped when people realized that Gnome 3 wasn't going to be scolded into turning back into version 2 and those people who couldn't get over it found another DE.

I really hated Gnome 3 when it came out. It seemed slow and it just didn't make any sense compared to what I was used to. It was a shock to my senses. Today I don't mind it at all, and I actually chose to run Ubuntu because they had a decently fresh version of Gnome 3 in their LTS release and I've not had a single problem with it. I even installed i3 because I figured that sooner or later I would need a *real* window manager to get anything done, but I haven't loaded it up yet.

Oh, I'm not worried about the world "becoming Red Hat users." But we will continue to see a corporate, homogenizing influence on the Linux systems that we are asked to maintain. Red Hat latched immediately upon the service and support issues which are so vital to corporate users, and they've always and unabashedly charged for the service. But, they do provide the service that they charge for. And, yes, they pretty much do things "one way." (But, realistically, they have to.)

I think we're seeing the effects of designers trying to sort-out the differences between "portable" machines and "non-portable" ones ... trying to reconcile the two worlds, perhaps more than they actually need to be reconciled.

How is Red Hat taking over the world with Gnome 3? It seems like they are losing grounds with developers moving to Qt, and there aren't many large distros offering Gnome 3 as their main flavour. Ubuntu = Unity, openSUSE = KDE, Linux Mint = Cinnamon, Elementary = Pantheon, etc. I believe it's only Debian, besides Fedora, which offers Gnome 3 as its main DE.