Hi!
Since a couple of years I installed multi boot systems (Desktops Gnome2, KDE, LXDE and Xfce). A few problems concerning 3G, sound and wireless on KDE, LXDE and Xfce, no problem with several Gnome editions; especially bluetooth was no problem with Gnome2, but the other ones. For me Gnome2 was the best one.
I don't like Gnome3 and I am afraid (yes!) all Linux distributions with Desktop Gnome some day will come with Gnome3 , and it is not possible for a normal user to avoid Gnome3 - am I right?
alfredo

You can always boot to "init 3" and stick with the command line

Heck, maybe you can even join the Gnome development team and contribute some of your ideas to improve Gnome and make it better!

Hi Alfredo,

1. Gnome 3 will keep getting better and better! Someday you might say "I can't believe I used to like Gnome 2, it was so primitive!" A lot of users are encouraging Gnome to keep a desktop/fallback mode similar to Gnome 2.x. If you get involved with the project, you can give your input and make the future of Gnome better: http://www.gnome.org/get-involved/

2. There is a possibility someone will "fork" Gnome 2 and it will continue as an independent project. This is what happened with KDE 3.x and the Trinity desktop: http://www.trinitydesktop.org/

3. Several distributions will support Gnome 2.x for quite some time, including Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, Mint, Debian Stable, Red Hat/CentOS, etc. so you can keep using Gnome 2.x for years if you like.

An Arch Linux user has gone ahead and forked Gnome 2. It's called the Mate Desktop Environment.

http://matsusoft.com.ar/redmine/projects/mate

Original Arch thread: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=121162

From what I understood it's only one person working on this... Which is astounding. I wish I was a developer so I could help him out

You could always switch to Xfce: that's what Linus Torvalds has done.

Mate sounds interesting, but I wonder how stable they will be able to make it. The Gnome developers said that increasing problems with maintenance was one of the reasons for deciding on a radical overhaul.

@ moniker117

Are you using CPU scaling (with it starting at boot), or if you're on a laptop - laptop-mode-tools? Just asking because that completely solved my overheating issue with Gnome 3.

I've actually adjusted quite well to the Gnome Shell thanks to the many extensions available in the AUR

I'm curious about something. I've seen a few of these threads lamenting the loss of Gnome 2, but don't some of the 'stable' distros (RHEL and clones, debian squeeze etc) offer years of upcoming support for gnome 2?

Can't you just use one of the long term support distro's until Gnome 3 becomes a little more polished and stable?

YES! This is a valid approach (as I mentioned in post #3).

The drawback however is that Red Hat, Debian, etc. don't always enjoy the reputation as "user friendly" and don't provide the latest applications and hardware support. So it is definitely a trade-off.

I don't run laptop-mode or CPU scaling.

I'm not too sure if it will help, though. I think issue with my laptop is more the GPU than anything else. The nVidia proprietary drivers are really buggy when I use them with Gnome-Shell, so I'm using the nouveau drivers. nouveau runs a lot more stable but, unfortunately, I think it heats up my laptop.