The core of Ubuntu is fine, I just don't really like Unity. While you can technically use regular Ubuntu and install Gnome, I've always had some weird stuff happen because Unity's still around.
My typical suggestion for other people is Ubuntu Gnome, because it provides them with the "just working" Linux, and most people I've talked to enjoy Gnome more than Unity.
As for regular Ubuntu, I'm not really a fan of their recent bouts of Not Invented Here Syndrome. Everything has to be made by them, for absolutely no reason. And they tried to belittle Wayland, and make up blatant falsehoods to do it.
If they were willing to focus on making ONE really, really good product, and push that towards consumers, instead of spreading their focus everywhere, I feel like they'd have a much better core product, Ubuntu Desktop (with Server out there, too, because it's not difficult to decouple the GUI stuff).
Yeah, I'm kind of the same way. I love Unity and want them to succeed heavily, but I wish they'd jive better with the rest of the Linux world.
I haven't used Gnome 3 enough to make a fair comparison, but I loved Gnome 2 and was loathing the transition to Unity with 12.04. After a few days of using it though, I loved most of what it offered me. Realistically, my biggest concerns were screen real estate (13" laptop, minimal vertical pixels) and quick access to my programs (cmd opens the launcher), so i was really happy with Ubuntu for that.
I'm quite fond of Gnome 3. It's gotten a whole lot better since it started (it was kind of a mess when they started).
Every two-ish releases I try out Ubuntu again to see if Unity's better, and each time it seems like they never address my main concern, speed. Unity seems really slow. I've never done benchmarks or tests, but on an i7 machine with 16GB of RAM, I would expect it to be snappy. It's even worse on my netbook.
I like the dock on the side, but the super menu and alt+f2 prompts are really bad in my mind. If I could get the dock, and maybe the global menus (I'm ambivalent on them), with Gnome Shell's activities menu, I'd be happy. Also dynamic workspaces, I really like those.
My typical suggestion for other people is Ubuntu Gnome, because it provides them with the "just working" Linux, and most people I've talked to enjoy Gnome more than Unity.
As for regular Ubuntu, I'm not really a fan of their recent bouts of Not Invented Here Syndrome. Everything has to be made by them, for absolutely no reason. And they tried to belittle Wayland, and make up blatant falsehoods to do it.
If they were willing to focus on making ONE really, really good product, and push that towards consumers, instead of spreading their focus everywhere, I feel like they'd have a much better core product, Ubuntu Desktop (with Server out there, too, because it's not difficult to decouple the GUI stuff).