Switch to a distro with rolling releases. I've been a happy Gentoo user for over a decade. It was a scary time when Gnome 3 came out and I had to mask a lot of updates, but eventually Mate became stable enough for me to switch over from Gnome 2. Total control the whole time. If something doesn't work, it's my own fault. Of course XFCE, KDE, etc. have been available the whole time too.