GNOME Shell 2.91.90 released

I use tiling in Gnome too. In Metacity or Compiz or Gnome-shell it's not terribly different. In fact I can switch to most any decent WM with minimal loss in functionality.

I have between 15-30 shells open, each one nicely labelled with the program running or the system it's on. I have a total of maybe 4 or 5 terminals open. I can flip between them with lightening speed and I rarely lose track of what is going on.

AND....

I can use Gimp just fine.

The secret is 'Gdevilspie' and 'tmux'. Plus a script called 'launch-gnome-terminals' that I created a *.desktop file for and stuck in ~/.config/autostart/ so that the environment gets rebuilt the same exact way every time I log in.

:)

I even use vim in server mode so that the files I am editing are always in the same place on the screen at the same time. And they recover automatically when I log out and log back in.

It's all quite fantastic and the environment is far more flexible and modular then people give it credit for.

For me a simple GUI environment is one that has a specific default configuration that aims to do 'the right thing' and relatively little. That way I only have to care about what I WANT to care about. Instead of having to figure out everything out I can get what I want through add-ons and plugins.

I used Gnome Shell for a little while and I found it to be quite a improvement in basic window and application management over the traditional WIMP-style interface. I don't see why I should be scared of it or whatever.

Performance was the main issue, but I am eager to try it again. I am very eager to get the 'whole ten yards' with Zeitgeist integration and such things. Also I am eager to see how it compares with Ubuntu's Unity.