>The only people I hear complaining are typically people who expect the Linux desktop to remain static and unchanging the way it was when they first used it.

Or who are stuck on older hardware (why was 2d retired, again?)...

Or who think it's utterly silly you have to write a INI (.desktop) file to put arbitrary links in the "dock"..

Or who think that the interface wastes a lot of space...

You've went and generalized a lot of people with legitimate complaints about that DE. Kind of like Ubuntu's developers do.