Applications (and I consider Gnome to be an app) can always be
upgraded. If not via apt-get, then directly from source.

Do you have any idea whether the 8.04 kernel is "frozen" and won't
receive any updates for the next 3 years (even though there's been
at least one 8.04 kernel update since May 2008)?

> In addition it loads faster and shuts down much faster.

But how many times does one (re)boot and/or shutdown in a day? :-)

Seriously, have you by any chance timed the boot/shutdown difference
between 8.04 and 8.10 on the same hardware platform (since you've
already used both 8.04 and 8.10)? Just curious.