My two cents
I run a Ubuntu 10.04LTS server at home (upgrading to 12.04 next year... that'll be fun!) and my primary desktop is running 11.10.
Whilst I couldn't more heartily agree with the sentiments of all the other Linux users who hate Gnome 3 (and Unity) and are jumping ship to join XFCE, I can't help but wonder just how many of these users are actively contributing to the development of any applications. For me to switch to Xfce would not only take Xfce being my preference (which, admittedly, it is), but also for Xfce to be the preference of the majority of application developers on my chosen platform (GNU/Linux).
Does anyone have statistics on how many application developers are writing for Xfce now instead of Gnome? Is Thunar going to get a few Nautilus developers, for example, or is the Linux userbase no longer intrinsically linked to the Linux developerbase?
I'll ride the storm of Gnome 3 until I hear that developers are switching and not "just" users.
At the risk of turning this post into a rant...
Gnome 3 is just one symptom of a much larger problem - the industry as a whole is looking towards tablets and smartphones as being the future of computing. The desktop is becoming an obsolete timepiece from a bygone era, and this is making a lot of people understandably upset. I'm one of them! I certainly hope that the desktop is not going to be replaced by the tablet, and I can't see any reason why it should be - until developers are writing on tablets, for tablets, it's not a replacement for the desktop. It's merely an extension of it. Windows is doing it with Windows 8, Linux is doing it with Gnome 3 and Unity and Mac is doing it on their iOS line... oh wait, Mac aren't doing it to their desktop operating system... they've realised there are two different markets that need to be catered for in two different ways. Shock horror, someone in the industry is still making sensible decisions. For once, it isn't Linux.
[/rant]