While I think GNOME Shell is slick and all, the deal breaker for me was that it does not work, at all, under xrdp or NX Desktop. I've found that KDE works flawlessly and is more comfortable to use.
I last used KDE in 1997, beta 7, and when it was very CDE-like. I dropped it for GNOME 1.x (which was pretty bad, to be honest) because, at the time, I was a licensing purist. Now, 15 years later, I don't care anymore. I want something that works. I want indicators on my screen. I want multiple windows on my screen. I do not want an "attention focused" desktop. I'm back to KDE after all these years and happy again.