GTK 2x and 3x mismatch.

["dE ." <de techno gmail com>]

Hi.

Ever since Gnome shell came out, my problems have been amplifying. 
Current problem are the themes, it happens that in Debian testing, the 
Gnome 2.x applications are being replaced by 3.x which's based on GTK3. 
As a result the 2.x themes don't apply on them. The 2.x themes are used 
by the few remaining 2.x apps + panels + metacity.

Thus the desktop looks pretty ugly with these apps. I've seen Gnome 3 
themes (with metacity themes + gtk 2.x + 3.x themes)... but they are 
very less in number and not available in the repositories. They also 
don't get installed with the existing theme manager.

Next, I know as gnome 2.x becomes deprecated, gnome 3 apps will be 
pushed into tree, leaving gnome panels and metacity looking ugly.

Is there a solution to this? I'm not planning any move to shell since 
these will be a production systems and the users dont like Gnome 3.

I know gnome 2 panel applets are not backwards compatible with gnome 3 
panels, but does gnome panels 3 even have applets?