For those of you who find the Unity desktop to be an overweight example of "designer" solipsism, try out the alternative light weight desktops like Lubuntu (LXDE based) or Xubuntu (XFCE based).
sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop
or
sudo apt-get install lubuntu-desktop
In fact I did that in the past weeks after being a bit weary of the Unity 8 situation. So I grabbed Debian testing and installed it. First I tried Gnome 3, then KDE and XFCE and boy, are they all ugly.
I started with Gnome 3.10 (after ignoring it for most of it's existence except once in the early time) and it failed to register simple mouse clicks in a Steam game (the firs thing I tried). It's also sluggish and ugly and hard to get anything productive done.
So I went to KDE 4.11 next. And it's as ugly as ever. The huge sound indicator at the bottom is just so ugly. And then they have what looks like a Start menu thingy to launch applications. Oh boy, that felt odd. Still miles better than Gnome 3, but nothing I'd like to see on a daily basis.
XFCE is just too bare-bone for me. It's OK in looks, but the task bars are just clumsy.
So I'm probably sticking to Ubuntu for the next LTS cycle too and see what comes of the Unity 8 desktop. Sad to see there are no real contenders.
Agree with you XFCE in Xubuntu. I just can't force myself to like Unity, stock Debian is ugly, and LXDE on Lubuntu looks flat out terrible on my 1080p monitors. Just a smeary blue and silver mess.
I don't think XFCE is perfect, but it ticks the important boxes for me. So much so that I just use it out of the box now rather than rolling my own from a vanilla OpenBox install (a fun exercise, btw).
xfce + kupfer = solution. Of course, you have to have a "Meta-Space <type first letters of app>" style of interaction mode, but I'm finding it quite an acceptable DE/Shell environment to replace the horrible, stinking mess of Unity.
You can easily customize everything on the task bar and the task bar itself. I could neither stand the sizes/fonts/ugliness but after several days of tweaking it no longer looks like KDE at all and I am very happy with it :)
I think you are being downvoted because of tone rather than fact.
Facts: Ubuntu desktop releases are available in a variety of 'flavours' including Lubuntu, Xubuntu and Gnome Ubuntu. The Kubuntu release has external sponsorship from Blue Systems. There is also UbuntuStudio that packages a lot of music/sound/graphics/video applications with a slightly remodelled XFCE4 UI. LTS status is limited to 3 years for the 'flavours' as opposed to 5 years for the Unity based Ubuntu, still one year overlap with the next LTS.
You can, as go8z says, install a range of desktop sessions on stock Ubuntu, but you do end up with a certain amount of duplication e.g. power manager, mousepad/Abiword and gedit/LibreOffice &c.
Plenty of choice so we can get our work done. It is all here...
As someone who loves window-manager designer solipsism as much as the stark minimalism of terminals, Gnome has improved quite a bit recently and I've come to much prefer it over Unity (and a suitable replacement for OSX). I'd normally lean towards something lightweight such as XFCE, but proper Gnome 3 support is necessary.
sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop or sudo apt-get install lubuntu-desktop