Even if you didn't install a desktop widget for W8 you only had to deal with the Metro Interface on logging in and after that you spent 99% of your time on the desktop. The Metro Interface was really only bad because of being tablet centric and if it had been properly adjusted for the PC environment I don't think there would have been as much push back.
You forgot to mention the lack of a start button.
Personally, I think Windows 8 was Steve Jobs having the last laugh. He went on about how tablets were going to replace PCs, and MS were the ones who were stupid enough to believe him. They would have been better off designing seperate PC and tablet editions.
The widget I installed boots me directly to desktop, after the blue bootup/login screen appears. And I have a start menu/button in the lower right, with the usual stuff in the bottom bar (app tabs, processes/control section, and of course date & time). So I don't see the 'Metro' interface at all, unless I deliberately go there somehow (as I never need it, I'm not sure how I would bring the 'tile' menu up in the first place on my desktop). I have no need to know, as the desktop environment has everything I need.
As Dr McCoy said in TMP (paraphrasing) 'gotta luv engineers, they just love to change things'. Hopefully the staff at Microsoft learned their lesson with 8 about the downside of changing things just for the sake of changing them... (not holding my breath).