It takes time to get the mentality; took me years as well.
The shiny & pretty, especially if you're coming from the shiny & pretty, seems better and you forget to appreciate the things that silently just work in the background.
I've recently switched from the previous elementary (due to bugs and missing features) first to Mint 18 Cinnamon, just to find a lot of bugs there are well ( at least no missing features ), then to XFCE.
I'm slowly building an itch towards where most distros are moving to (being swallowed up by systemd), so XFCE: to get familiar with something that is truly portable, and runs of BSDs as well. xfwm4 + tint2 as panel + synapse as "menu" to be specific, and I'm really happy I did it.
No, it's not as nice as eOS or Gnome Shell; some apps are quite ugly and the terminal windows don't line up when tiled.
But it works. It's fast, it's glitch and bug-free so far; power management flies, and it feels like I got all the good from the good ol' Gnome2 days with updates.
The truth is, tint2 eliminated the need for fancy indicators: it has an executor, with which you can do (nearly) anything, like displaying weather, cpu temperature, fan speed, changing governors with clicks, etc.
So, as I started: it takes a lot of frustration, but eventually, you'll get to the point of install the most simple, most robust thing.
The shiny & pretty, especially if you're coming from the shiny & pretty, seems better and you forget to appreciate the things that silently just work in the background.
I've recently switched from the previous elementary (due to bugs and missing features) first to Mint 18 Cinnamon, just to find a lot of bugs there are well ( at least no missing features ), then to XFCE.
I'm slowly building an itch towards where most distros are moving to (being swallowed up by systemd), so XFCE: to get familiar with something that is truly portable, and runs of BSDs as well. xfwm4 + tint2 as panel + synapse as "menu" to be specific, and I'm really happy I did it.
No, it's not as nice as eOS or Gnome Shell; some apps are quite ugly and the terminal windows don't line up when tiled.
But it works. It's fast, it's glitch and bug-free so far; power management flies, and it feels like I got all the good from the good ol' Gnome2 days with updates.
The truth is, tint2 eliminated the need for fancy indicators: it has an executor, with which you can do (nearly) anything, like displaying weather, cpu temperature, fan speed, changing governors with clicks, etc.
So, as I started: it takes a lot of frustration, but eventually, you'll get to the point of install the most simple, most robust thing.