> Just the fact that people need a ton of shell extensions to make it barely usable is a problem in itself.
Idunno, FireFox pretty nicely demonstrates that a simple, straightforward platform with an emphasis on extensions can be great. Your use-case doesn't necessarily match my use-case, and letting the users get lost in a sea of config files to customize them has kind of proven to just cause havoc... so why not focus on extensions?
Extensions per se are good and fine. The big problem with Gnome extensions is that the Gnome people aren't really treating them as first class citizens and happily break some of them every update. So each time a new version of Gnome comes out you either have to wait a few month while all your extensions get updated or go a few month without all your favorite extensions.
I think firefox lost its way because it focused on extensions for things that should have been browser core functionality. What does firefox stand for these days? Why would I use it over Opera or Konqueror?
Idunno, FireFox pretty nicely demonstrates that a simple, straightforward platform with an emphasis on extensions can be great. Your use-case doesn't necessarily match my use-case, and letting the users get lost in a sea of config files to customize them has kind of proven to just cause havoc... so why not focus on extensions?