>>4049
I'm not sure what you mean by patronising, the interface works, is unobtrusive, and works well, it is similar to the DE used in windows by default, but the same is true of many DE's including XFCE, and it can be customised quite easily, obviously not to the same extent as something like KDE, but much, much more than windows can be and as much or more than the bulk of users will actually want, for those that want to go further, other DE's will suit better
Its worth noting that XFCE use the exact same metaphor by default in most distros its rolled with, a taskbar, a context menu, an indicator panel etc, it just does it worse with more archaic defaults (you can't even open whisker menu with the super/win key in many distros out of the box) and more of the old school linux problems, like the aforementioned screen tearing on perfectly good hardware and horrible looking text
The standard Desktop metaphor has lasted because it works better than most metaphors, Mint has been successful because it works better than most distros, but if you like something else that's fine