Agreed, it's the only mainstream desktop with Windows 2000-era ergonomics, which I particularly like. I reluctantly use GNOME now for its better security.
Does KDE not have that? I don't know a lot about this and have just been using whatever DE comes default. Gnome3 does seem like it's trying to be "different," and I remember Gnome2 being more normal.
Same here, it is either XFCE or KDE, when on GNU/Linux.
Ideally WindowMaker, but there is not much development going on there nowadays.