I thought the opposite. I used Linux from about 1998 (RH 5.2, pre Fedora and pre RHEL) and I thought the opposite. The GNOME2 desktop didn't get in the way, nor did KDE 3.5 (I used both). I found that with GNOME3 and Unity, they thought that I was an idiot and needed help navigating around my computer to find files, directories and applications. If anything, the UI got in the way because it was very difficult to do anything (and particularly difficult to do something using the keyboard only).

They confused the desktop with a tablet interface. When I have two 24" screens on my desk, I don't want some weird popup at the side and don't want to be waving my arm left to right and back just to get stuff done. I would argue that the Linux desktop and new strange desktop paradigms (more like tablet paradigms) are a step backwards; probably usable on netbooks but not for me thanks.