Many years ago I used KDE as my main Linux desktop environment. I switched to gnome around the same time that I switched to Debian and later Ubuntu. I liked GTK themes. I liked Gnome’s way of keeping the visual simple and found that it was much more solid than KDE, especially KDE version 4+. I’ve lived in a Gnome utopia for quite some time, and I loved it.
Now, we have Gnome 3 and Unity. XFCE4 is a good alternative but it just isn’t Gnome 2. Rather than battle it any longer and continue my search for a Gnome 2 alternative. I’m switching back to KDE. I don’t care if I hate it. At least they aren’t trying this whole unification approach that is killing the desktop in Linux on many distributions.
So far, LinuxMint has been the only distribution I’ve found that had a decent Gnome 3 setup by default, and it has some freakish glitch with my ATI video card that appears to make it reset itself from time to time. It just acts really flaky.
So, I’m installing the kde-full package in Debian Wheezy right now and crossing my fingers for a better experience.