I'm not sure what all the hate for Gnome 3 was about. I've used Debian for quite a long time, and when Debian 7 came out it shipped with gnome3 as the default desktop. It took me all of half an hour to get used to and it seems to work well and doesn't get in my way. Granted, being a Debian user meant I missed out on perhaps any early horrors Gnome 3 had, but to be honest I find it a very competent desktop and have felt no desire to go back to a Gnome 2 like interface (in fact I always make sure the 3D drivers are working so I get a proper Gnome 3 desktop if I set up a new machine).