As you anticipate, GNOME 2 is almost dead. Compiz is not. It is the window
manager used by Unity and has Canonical's backing. The problem with GNOME 2
is two-fold. GNOME no longer supports it and GTK2 is not capable as a
developer platform which is what forced GNOME to produce GTK3 and GNOME 3.
The second problem s why it is more likely to die an ignoble death. Other
developers can support GNOME 2, but they cannot fix the shortcomings of GTK
2. That is why Mate, IMO, is not a good choice. The GNOME 2 applications
will lack features and some will no longer be available as time progresses.

The combination of GNOME 2 and Compiz may have once been good, but it has
no future. That produces a problem for fans of GNOME 2. Where do they go?
Mate is one option, but it is not a drop in replacement unless you were a
Mint user previously. The panel is at the bottom and it uses Mint menus
instead of GNOME2's top panel and familiar menus. So there really is little
reason for a GNOME2 user to move to Mate. I could say the same for
Cinnamon. It is for Mint users. It is a modified GNOME Shell built on top
of GNOME 3 with Mint menu and bottom panel. Fans of GNOME 2 will find it
unfamiliar.

The best choice IMO is XFCE, but you need to make some modifications to
make it look like GNOME2. You can move the panel from the bottom to the
top. You can install Compiz and use it as the window manager.

www.ghacks.net/2010/07/11/run-compiz-with-xfce4/

You can use any Compiz based distros or install it in your current
distribution without having to re-install. I would recommend Mint XFCE,
Arch with XFCE, Xubuntu, or Debian 6 with XFCE. Arch and Debian are more
for experts. Mint 13 XFCE and Xubuntu 12.10 (newest) are newbie friendly.

Arch and XFCE with Compiz
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3IWUOH9LI0

The ghacks link above will work for either Mint 13 or Xubuntu.

How to change the XFCE panel:
http://docs.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-panel/preferences (unlock it first then
click a panel handle and drag it to the top)

If you want to stay with GNOME2 and Compiz combination the longest then
install Debian 6. You can transition to XFCE and Compiz later.

I wasn't a Mint user until I had to make a choice, and Cinnamon is a lot more
productive than Unity for me. I don't care whether the menu is at the top or the
bottom -- I just want a menu.

Conky, a weather applet and Dropbox "just work," and that has not been my
experience in some environments.

Many people formed their opinions on Unity rather early on. I think that it
deserves a fresh look when you are comparing it to Cinnamon which came out
after Unity. Likewise GNOME Shell has matured much in the same time and
much of Cinnamon's benefits comes from improved GNOME 3 and GNOME shell
extensions. I am not a regular Unity user as I am a KDE guy, but I have
used it from the start and it is night and day over that time. My opinion
is that once users get used to Unity it will knock the socks off most other
DEs. KDE excepted, or I would be using Unity.

My point about Mint users liking it better than GNOME is based on more than
just the location of the panel. The menu is different. Yes, it is a menu,
but you have to be a fan of slab menus to like it. I am not. KDE has one
and it is one of the first things that I change. It comes down to
expectations. If a GNOME user tries Mate or Cinnamon and expects it to look
like GNOME 2 then they are going to be disappointed. Since the discussion
was based on coming from a GNOME 2 perspective then that is the approach
that I took. I did not even mention KDE which is what I use as an option
because like Mate and Cinnamon it has a bottom panel and a slab menu.

I honestly think that many people would be better advised to try Unity than
go to Mate which is dead in the water -- long term. I also think that those
who like Cinnamon should look more closely at GNOME Shell on which it is
based. BTW, Unity can now run on openSuSE and Arch. It is only a matter of
time before it is on Fedora, too. It will run on smartphones and TVs. It
has lots of momentum and development power behind it. That bodes well for
it and not for other DEs. Note: I am not an Ubuntu fan or a regular Unity
user. That is the reality of having many paid full time developers and a
rich sugar daddy in Shuttleworth. I also think they have vision and
ambition.

I am not saying that you should *not* use other DEs. I use a different one.
I am saying judge things *fairly*. Do not listen to hype or base decisions
on past prejudices Try things for yourself.

You may have to adjust your workflow short term, but you can increase your
productivity using Unity once you make the adjustment. I know because I
have tried it. If you cannot make the adjustment to some parts, global
menu, overlay scroll bars, window controls on left, they are all
customizable. The Launcher and Dash are very useful. HUD works great and I
was a big critic of that in the past. There are many lenses and scopes that
you can add. These are the heart of Unity. There is an adjustment that you
have to make when moving to any new desktop environment.

In order to do my column, I need to run the latest version of Ubuntu, so I have
Ubuntu 12.10 installed on both my laptop and my desktop, in a multi-boot
environment. On the laptop, it looks great and runs great, on the desktop not so
much. (I'm trying to figure out why it locks up hard after running for a short
while, less than three hours so far.)

When I want to get some work done, I use Mint 13. When I want to fool around, I
spend some time in Ubuntu 12.10.

I think "one environment for all devices" is the wrong path, but time will tell.
The obvious example: I can't imagine running Windows 8 on a device that doesn't
support touch.

What column do you write? I'd be interested in hearing about what you write
and which programs you do it. Funny enough, I just installed Mint 13 on my
laptop this morning.

Mint 13 is based on the more stable Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. If stability is your
thing then LTS is the way to go. It has a proven record. To play it is nice
to try newer things and discover adventure. Since I am inherently unstable
;-), I forego the LTS. Actually, I think that I have not upgraded my eeePC
yet, so I have a bit of stability yet.

I have not experienced any lockups in awhile. It could be hardware related,
but that would show in both boot OSes and not just one. Although sometimes
OSes run differently, especially if it is optimized for one and not the
other. It could be a memory leak in one application or running out of
resources in which case I would monitor the resources. Or it could be a
driver issue. You could have dust bunnies inside. There are many things
that could come into play.

I would be more interested in hearing about your writing as well.

I do the Q&A column in Full Circle Magazine. For the mechanical part, I use
Gedit, then upload the text and any images into Google Docs.

When I'm the one who provides the answer part of Q&A, it's always a result of
using Google. It's amazing how often the answer shows up in the first three
results from a Google search, if you know how to construct a good query.

I'm most of the way to solving my lockup problem. If I don't run Conky, the
system works just fine. My Conky script has about a dozen moving parts, so my
next step will be to track down which one is the troublemaker. That could take
days, but I'll get there.