I'm using Gnome in compatibility mode and compiz to keep the old flavor with wobbly windows and desktop cube from the good old days.
I tried doing that with unity, but unity still stinks. If I ever have the free time, i think about writing my very own Desktop taking the (imho) best features of those i know and put it together in a fantastic UI (for me)
For example I liked the auto extend Desktop feature from Gnome Shell, but back when i tried it, it's multi monitor support just didnt work properly.
Apart from new look, unity has broken so many things and Ubuntu got just slower with it, i could never get real friend with it. On weaker hardware I'm use xfce and lxde. (xubuntu / lubuntu), Oh and I never got friend with KDE.