> 1. The applet to inhibit screen sleeping went away. Without it, I often look up from working on a hard problem to discover that my screens have been blanked out.
The Presentation Mode shell extension fixes this - adds an option to the drop-down menu on the power meter to turn on presentation mode, disabling screen blanking & locking.
> 4. About half of the GNOME configuration has moved to gconf to dconf, but there's no rhyme or reason as to which half. When I discovered the new settings applet, I tried to change stuff with gconf/dconf, except I have no idea how to figure out which applications use what settings storage backend.
I think finishing this migration is a work-in-progress.
Don't have immediate solutions for the rest of your gripes. Gnome 3 seems to be a love-it-or-hate-it thing; I find it to be great (modulo a few bugs and quirks, but it isn't everyone's cup of tea.
The Presentation Mode shell extension fixes this - adds an option to the drop-down menu on the power meter to turn on presentation mode, disabling screen blanking & locking.
> 4. About half of the GNOME configuration has moved to gconf to dconf, but there's no rhyme or reason as to which half. When I discovered the new settings applet, I tried to change stuff with gconf/dconf, except I have no idea how to figure out which applications use what settings storage backend.
I think finishing this migration is a work-in-progress.
Don't have immediate solutions for the rest of your gripes. Gnome 3 seems to be a love-it-or-hate-it thing; I find it to be great (modulo a few bugs and quirks, but it isn't everyone's cup of tea.