But they need to settle on one desktop GUI and work on fit and finish issues, instead of having holy wars about Gnome, KDE, Enlightment, etc. The end user just wants to get a job done, not get into a minefield of computer technical minutia"

It's not the developers of a Distro that get into such 'holy wars" over a DE, it IS the end user that does: die hard fanboys of one UI vs the other that spark flame wars on forums and any other outlet they can post it on. Don't like a certain DE? Fine, don't use it, but at the same time dno't imply that it is a piece of crap just because -you- don't like it. "To Each Their Own" Learn it. Live it. Get the F**k over it.