Comment 11 for bug 1274740

Your definition of "GNOME" is not the one we have, some extra comments:
- gnome-session setting XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP is an Ubuntu feature, not an upstream one, we use it change behaviour between Unity/gnome-shell
- the previous point means the things that use that variable are limited, they are basically distro change (so not as much work as your comment would suggest)
- we use "GNOME" as "gnome-shell" nowadays, that's what enable e.g shell menu, client side decoration (what is creating your issue here)
- our patches are usually "do something specific under Unity|gnome-shell, have normal/fallback behaviour otherwise", I think if you are not Unity or gnome-shell you are likely to be always fine with the fallback behaviour (Unity specific bits are integration with e.g the launcher, gnome-shell ones are the ones I listed before)

Do you have any example of thing that would stop working if you changed your DesktopName to be "cairo-dock"?