I did not imply Unity (nor Win. 7) was changing solely for the sake of change, what I was trying to say, there are areas that did not have to be changed, but were. If you go back and read carefully, I did say "I understood the need to support tablets and touch screens". I also understand that an approach like Unity might be more desirable for tablet. Regardless, Gnome 2 could have been kept. Why drop it? What underlying part of the kernel changed that forced the I/F to change? The same holds true for Win. 7 (for instance, "sort a folder on Mod. Date" and the sort order is changed to descending when it used to be left alone - that was unnecessary change - there are other similar instances - The same is true with Ubuntu and Unity). Backward compatibility is always an issue, sometimes it can't be done because of the implementation required for completely new function. However, the I seriously doubt that the OS I/Fs which Gnome 2, Gnome 3 and Unity use have changed in any fashion that prohibits Gnome 2 from being executed, especially since the other desktops seem to function the same way. I also understand the reluctance to maintain two different desktops, but I doubt that much effort would have been required to keep Gnome 2 as an option - the same holds true for those Linux distros that use Gnome 3.