Responses below:

On 09/22/2014 09:23 AM, Dimitar Zhekov wrote:

After 15 years of using Linux desktop, 3 of which as maintainer of a source-based distribution? :)

I'm glad (if you want to call it that) to hear that it sounds like only a recent trend to abandon the users. I hope they figure things out, because it's been a painful few years because of the recent trends. I'm surprised at how much grief some of these projects have caused to linux users as a whole, but it's like they are ignoring their constituents. Linux. I fight for the users ;-) (tron reference)

But you are right that systemd is not the only reason. KDE 4, GNOME 3, FF[1], the list goes on, and recently even gtk+ 2.24.23+ (IIRC the revision) is slightly broken. Guess I finally lost faith in the Linux as desktop. I hope, for all of you, that Xfce 5 will be just fine.

I'm also happy to hear someone reiterate my disgruntlement with GNOME 3. One small glimmer of hope is that Ubuntu Mate is emerging to fill that nostalgic gap. Unfortunately, I don't know if they are doing anything with systemd, as it will still be based on Ubuntu, but at least I get my sane interfaces back without having to switch to Xfce :-/ They are even packaging compiz, which much of linux practically abandoning it has been another sore spot for me, although that could be blamed on GNOME 3 partly as well for going to Mutter. Now if only I could convince them to package Emerald window decorator. I miss 2007 linux ;-)

I especially like these points in Ubuntu Mate's mission:

Restore the halcyon days of Ubuntu before Unity (I would add GNOME 3 here) was introduced.
Provide a refuge for Linux users who prefer a traditional desktop metaphor.

Anyway, I hope the team doesn't mind my sharing about this recent distro.

Steve