Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Alpha

I don't think they want to let you turn off the animations. After all, if you could do that then GNOME Shell would work without requiring accelerated 3D. You would think that would be an option... after all "desktop virtualization" is on the list of "next big things in IT"... and hardware accelerated 3D doesn't work (at all or very well) in most virtualization products including KVM... so no GNOME Shell in your virtual desktop... nor in your remote terminal services type access types (VNC, FreeNX, NX, etc).

If you aren't hardware accelerated 3D capable, then it reverts to a quasi-GNOME 2.x interface. On the Fedora 15 Alpha release you can simulate a non-3D accelerated environment by picking "Boot (Basic Video)" at the boot screen (as witnessed in this review http://nicubunu.blogspot.com/2011/03/preview-fedora-15-gn...). Don't expect the visual touches to be there in this mode though... as the window decorations and theme are very basic.