Rawhide gets GNOME Shell for all display types

I would expect Ubuntu 12.04 to support many desktops (including GNOME) but I doubt that GNOME 2 will be one of them.

For people who have really liked Ubuntu with GNOME 2, the next best thing seems to be Linux Mint.

It seems unlikely that GNOME 2 will continue to be maintained longer term though which is why so many GNOME 2 fans have been moving to XFCE. XFCE uses so many GNOME libraries these days that it's status as a GNOME alternative is more than skin deep.

The Freedesktop.org standards have really made moving between DEs much less painful. Also, there are so many desktops reusing GNOME libraries that there is really a "family" of GNOME desktops. For example, the Elementary guys have a completely independent desktop vision but since they use things like GVFS, Evolution data server, and notifications, it is really a pretty natural environment for GNOME apps.