"From a lot of irritation at first I have stuck with it on F15"
And that is the problem. When the original Mac was released and Apple ][ and PC users bought one did they do so because they wanted a more irritating experience? Did Commodore 64 owners use GEOS because they wanted something more difficult than archaic CBM-DOS commands to load and use applications? No, they used them because they found the new Graphical User Interfaces were enticing and held the promise of an easier, more intuitive and therefore more pleasant experience. Shortcomings were found (they always are) but it was a better experience right out of the gate.
This can not be said for Gnome 3 or Unity, although the difference between Gnome 3 and 2.X are not as great as the Apple ][ vs Mac/MS-DOS or CBM-DOS vs GEOS examples. Having said that even migrating from KDE 3.X to KDE 4 was a better experience than Gnome 2 to 3. I went to Gnome because KDE 4.0 was driving me round the bend. I found its reorganization of the K menu annoying, it was easy to lose track of where you were (no tree to illutratet the menu heirarchy) and a widget had to be used to simulate being able to put anything on the desktop! Utter silliness, what was a desktop for if not to be able to place things on it. Add to these annoyances a task-bar that seemed to have a mind of its own, and a Dolphin as a file manager and KDE 4 made my computing life painful. I spent far too much time fighting the UI instead of doing productive work. It was easier (and made me more productive) to switch to Gnome.
Ahhh.. Nautilus, while not as flexible as Konqueror (multiple split horizontal & vertical panes AND tabs (Nautilus now it at least can do a split pane with Tabs)) but it was much cleaner than the Aquatic Mammal file manager and didn't waste my precious desk space with instant-previews and the like. Having a task bar at the top and bottom was visually a little different, but it was not irritating, did not impede productivity or get in the way and it took no getting used to.
People who switched from Windows to Linux also liked Gnome, and preferred it over KDE 4.0. Gnome 2.x is actually so familiar to Windows users that in cases of stiff resistance simply applying a Windows XP theme was enough to eliminate all complaints. It was still Gnome 2.X and still worked like Gnome 2.x, but because it looked like XP it was OK. Many of these folks had trouble grasping the multiple desktop idea until they saw COMPIZ. That rotating cube turned on many light-bulbs. Now they understood because they could see the multiple desktops as something 'real'. THe concept was clear and made sense. Wobbly windows are another favourite, perhaps because it gives the window a sense of substance, in any event it is much liked. These things may not immediately contribute to productivity, but they will over the long-haul simply because they make the whole computing experience more pleasant. This is something that Apple designers (still) understand, yet others seem to have trouble coming to grips with. What happens is we end up with things like the idea of using a joystick to steer your car, something that is not so much a soloution to a problem, but rather is in search of one.