I fully agree. I just want a desktop that stays out of the way. I have ubuntu and I have replaced unity by cinnamon. It is not very polished, but in a couple of minute, you can configure it to be usable.
Unity has a huge flaw, though: to find a program you have to know its name. That sounds silly to non-nixers, but for instance some are known as one thing but actually are named something quite different (e.g., 'Document Viewer' = 'Evince'). In cases where unity doesn't recognize both names this can be a problem.
I used to learn the command-line invocation by looking at the shortcut in the menu. No more in unity (at least I haven't learned how).
It's also extremely satisfying in a mischievous sort of way whenever I walk into some public place and pull out my T410 with that setup. I can't count the number of stares I get. One guy even asked me why I used a laptop from the 1990s.