What's so wrong with GNOME Shell, anyway? Actually, I had this reaction when
my dad initially told me that GNOME Shell was terrible, mostly because I had
previously seen that the claim that Unity was terrible was untrue. Any claim
that GNOME Shell or Unity is terrible (well, other than Unity's new adware)
can only be a symptom of Baby Duck Syndrome.[0]
I actually did have complaints when I first used GNOME Shell: I didn't like
that you had to move the mouse so much, I didn't like that you could
accidentally hit the hot corner, I didn't like that you have to click a
second time to get to the programs, and I didn't like that it seemed I
couldn't configure it. But the first and third problems are non-existent in
practice; you usually find programs by searching them, and making a couple of
extra clicks and moving the mouse across the screen the few times you do need
to find it the other way just isn't that big of a deal (heck, it's a lot
better than waiting to scroll through a giant menu on GNOME Fallback). The
hot corner, I almost never accidentally hit in practice unless I forget to
turn the touchpad off. And in fact, GNOME Shell is extremely customizable;
you can write all kinds of extensions, or you can go to the GNOME Shell
extensions web site[1] to find all sorts of extensions made by other people
if (like me) you don't feel like programming your own.
There just isn't any legitimate reason to claim that GNOME Shell is
"horrible" or "terrible". It's just different.
[0]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprinting_%28psychology%29#Baby_duck_syndrome
[1] http://extensions.gnome.org
