I want my Ubuntu 9.04/9.10 back, is there any current similar distro?

You already pointed out two options that I was going to suggest :) Anyway I think it's worth making clear that you have many options.

• Stick with Ubuntu 10.04 for now. This is not a long term option, because eventually you will run out of updates (3 years for desktops, 5 years for servers). And who wants to use outdated software anyway, especially when it's free? After that maybe you will find the next LTS (12.04) is usable?
• Change to another distribution, like Mint. Since Ubuntu 11.04 I have found myself and a lot of my friends getting more satisfaction from Mint. Basically Mint is a modded version of Ubuntu (with Mint 11 being based on Ubuntu 11.04), so compatibility is an obvious bless. Soon Mint will be going after Gnome 3 (starting in the next release, which is somewhere near the end of this year), but I guess Gnome 3 will become more usable by then.
• Change for something different. Linux gives you many (sometimes too many) choices, so if you don't like something, feel free to take another. Gnome 2 is going to be deprecated so I wouldn't recommend looking for something with it. You can try KDE with Kubuntu, Openbox with Crunchbang, XFCE with Mint and what-not. The destination for choosing a distribution would be DistroWatch.

Xubuntu.

XFCE looks better and is less spartan than LXDE, I've kept the beloved Ubuntu, XFCE's panel is great, Compiz-Fusion works, drag-and-drop is no problem between Thunar (XFCE's file manager) and Nautilus (Gnome's one) and the desktop. A clean Xubuntu install would be better, but there're no major problems, I'm happy now.