"Firefox has gone from zero to hero in a year or so by making "fine tuning" the sole provenance of advanced users."

Where do you get that fantasy? Firefox has made configuration more accessable. Hell the pipelining change can be done from te browser screen with simple instructions - pointy-clicky rather than edit a .js file.

It's not more accessible. Just because there's a big list of inscrutably named options put in a place that isn't advertised, that's not accessible.

"Fine tuning, for the vast majority of users, is just another obstacle to getting stuff done."

Once again, IF THEY DON'T WANT TO, NO-ONE IS FORCING THEM TO. REMOVING THE ABILITY IS THE SAME AS CRIPPLING THE ENVIRONMENT. Sane defaults are a grand vision. Enforcing your preferences by removing the ability to change is not.

Yes, they are being forced to; when they need to change something IMPORTANT, they have to wade through five or six menu options over two menus (Konqueror) to find what they want, because no-one on the project had the nads to say "Y'know what? There's three whole users who want the CGI Scripts option. Time to remove it.".

"Ubuntu has gone from nothing to 2nd on Distrowatch in 8 months or so""

I'm not surprised at that - so, how many of those Ubuntu distros have been downloaded, burned and installed by the technically clueless target users that Gnome is supposedly aimed at? How many are being downloaded by those committed to free software and/or Debian policy? Somehow, I believe that the people downloading Ubuntu are more likely to be OUTSIDE the claimed target group.

I'm confused by this paragraph. Ubuntu's target audience is normal people. That said, it's my desktop and server Linux of choice.

"by committing to a desktop that makes "fine tuning" the sole provenance of advanced users."

Since I rather doubt that anybody downloading and installing Ubuntu is NOT an advanced user, again, I think not. Now, advanced users may be installing these things for Grandma or Grandpa, but I doubt youngsters will be interested; especially if they see the cool things that can be done elsewhere relatively easily - and the youngsters ARE the future. I know my ex's son, John, LOVES to fiddle. I'd have no problem giving KDE to his Grandma, either, (if she chose to climb off Windows) - she might not want to fiddle, so she won't. Both can use the same environment, easily.

And then she wants to change her homepage from Yahoo! to Google, or make the fonts bigger all the time. Bing! She's instantly in trouble. Fiddlers can fiddle no matter the system; give them something designed by fiddlers for fiddlers. It's fvwm2, and there's nothing it can't do.
And your persistent speculation about the end users of Ubuntu is entertaining, but ultimately unhelpful. The bottom line is that it's second only to Mandrake (which takes a chainsaw to stock KDE) on DistroWatch's list.

"Simpler is better; GET OUT OF MY FACE is the message."

Which, of course, has NOTHING to do with ANYTHING I've said, Peter. Once again, with feeling:

IF USERS WANT TO "FINE TUNE", NO-ONE IS FORCING THEM TO. REMOVING THE ABILITY IS THE SAME AS CRIPPLING THE ENVIRONMENT.

This is where your misunderstanding arises. Crippling the environment, as you so emotively put it, is another way of saying "getting rid of all the useless cack that is really a big pile of excuses for not taking design decisions". Just what is it that you can't do in GNOME that you can do in KDE?

"there's no usability win in excessive configurability[2]."

No? They've lost me - and others. Since I don't want it, I certainly won't recommend or support it for others. That's any number of future users. KDE is certainly NOT too hard for 'noobs' to use, no matter how Gnomes might want to characterize it.

The number of users lost because there aren't enough configuration options in GNOME 2.10 is, I'm willing to bet a beer or three, not enough to cause the developers to develop anything like a sense of giving a shit.

"The users are voting with their feet."

And Gnome is such a win that they just lost a whole distro. Real 'demand'. I think we'll see more before this is done.

If you're referring to the Slackware Dropping GNOME story, then I can tell you I spoke to all the Slackware users in the world, and they both say they were using Enlightenment anyway.

"[2] Users find it harder to change the stuff they do need to change because it's buried in 5 configuration menu items across two menus."

Soooo much harder than not being able to change it at all with out 'editing the registry'.

What registry? Oh, Gconf? Because it's a tree, it's a registry? Then I dub the KDE Control Centre the "KDE Registry". Because it's a tree, right? And yes, sometimes not being able to change something at all is an acceptable tradeoff if the ability to change it causes too much pain for users.

You should be able to deal with this simple truth (and simpler is better, no?):

Configurability and sane defaults are not mutually exclusive

No, they're not; but it's a much harder design process than KDE would have you think.