>Why not something like Cinnamon, which has a "natural" GNOME Shell layout
and a fallback mode at the same time?
Because Cinnamon, just like GNOME 3, is focused on modern machines with
proprietary blobs thus one can assume that the "fallback" options could be
discontinued in the near future. The classic option of GNOME Shell was
originally intended to be dropped real soon and kind of "survived" due to its
popularity.
A GNU/Linux distribution that uses absolutely no proprietary software and can
utilize modern hardware only to some little extend should use a desktop
environment that will most likely work under these circumstances in the
foreseeable future.
>Or Xfce
XFCE is another good option I think. I'm not quite sure about access for
handicapped people, though. Also, releases tend to be slow so reaction to
security holes could lead to some concerns (and security concerns seems to
make people consider switching to free software). Another little disadvantage
is, that GNOME usually comes with feature-rich applications that offer
everything new users expect from applications while XFCE tends to sacrifice a
bit of functionality for performance (which, again, is a plus for XFCE).
But generally, yes, if a bit of work goes into that I think XFCE is also a
good candidate for a 100% free software distro that also focuses on
usability, new users.
