Fathers Day, and the end of my Gnome-Shell series. I still find it surreal to log into a session running Gnome-Shell and see a desktop devoid of familiar features. Gnome-Shell is the new direction Gnome is going for release 3, and Ubuntu seems set on following suit. Will this be a smart move?

GNOME Shell is a window manager designed specifically for the upcoming GNOME 3 desktop, with the intention of offering a rather different way of interacting with the desktop, providing a workspace which hardly resembles the classic desktops.

Gnome Shell is a redesign to the way the gnome desktop looks and works. I find it very interesting, because it stops trying to base itself on windows' functionality and design, and instead it consists of an original design and functionality.

Gnome Shell is the future window manager for UNIX-like operating systems running the Gnome desktop environment. It is slated to be part of the Gnome 3.0, which will probably be released sometime next year. However, this does not mean you cannot try Gnome Shell now and get the first impression of what it ought to be.

GNOME Shell is a component of GNOME 3.0, the next generation of the GNOME desktop environment scheduled for release in March 2011. We did introduced Sonar, Elementary and Ambiance GNOME Shell themes before and we have one more to showcase, Equinox GNOME Shell theme.

Since GNOME 3.0 has been delayed until March, 2011, it seems there's enough time to rethink the way GNOME Shell looks, especially since a lot of people don't like it (especially from the usability point of view).

A couple weeks ago, I wrote some posts on GNOME Shell which included a number of criticisms of the desktop environment that will likely become Ubuntu's default at some point in the future.  Jon McCann, lead designer for GNOME Shell, recently got in touch to offer his responses to the problems I found with the new interface.  Here's what he had to say.

We saw the quiet evolution of GNOME Shell aka the next generation GNOME desktop environment. Now lets do some GNOME Shell theming.

I’ve been using the GNOME Shell preview available in Fedora 12 this week and I’m really enjoying it. I was testing out some candidates for updates to the free drivers for my ATI Radeon HD4850 (and the stuff that went with them) already, and decided to see what happened when I picked GNOME Shell. At F12 release time, my graphics card wasn’t quite ready for GNOME Shell use.