As soon as I "experienced" unity I RAN to gnome, screamed in horror, then ran to KDE and just cried a bit to myself. What the hell is happening to linux? Ever since the nearing of Steve Jobs' decline & death it's like every amateur designer in the world's been tyring to take his place.

They're all trying to mimick his vision and design but without understanding it at all. I think this is why we keep ending up with all these heartless, sterile, Kindergarden UI designs.

Try XFCE. Linus Torvalds said he uses it.

Meanwhile, KDE isn't all that bad nowadays. I actually kinda like KDE 4.8, it's come a long way since the early days of KDE 4.

Mint is still using Gnome 2, or I think there is a new fork of it named something else.

I agree though, although I blame the shift mainly on the tablet/smartphone mentality.

Mint is using a Gnome 3 fork called Cinnamon.