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.

GNOME 3 is the much talked about next generation GNOME that was supposed to come in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx. It introduces a radical shift from the interface found in GNOME 2.x. In this article we will give you a quick visual tour of GNOME 3 in Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Kola.

Gnome 3, due for inclusion in Ubuntu 10.04, will mark the first radical change to the Gnome Desktop since it's inception thanks to it’s “new” interface ‘Gnome-Shell’.

There’s been some grumbling among the Gnome community about if and when Gnome would have a major overhaul. Well with Gnome 3 we’ll have it in the form of Gnome Shell. It pretty much replaces the panel and window manager in a normal Gnome installation with a fully composited environment with some great new functionality.

Gnome 3, which will be available to install in Ubuntu 10.04, Fedora 13 will mark the first radical change to the Gnome Desktop since it’s inception, thanks to it’s “new” interface ‘Gnome-Shell’.

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?

Only a few days ago, we ran an article on the future of KDE and GNOME, and which of the two had the brighter future based on their developmental processes. Barely has that discussion ended, or the GNOME engineering team comes with a pretty daunting plan to introduce a fairly massive reworking of the GNOME interface for GNOME 3.0 (2.30). Read on for the details.

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 new completely revamped user interface for GNOME. GNOME Shell brings a new window manager called Mutter which is a combination of Metacity and Clutter. This reportedly makes Compiz unnecessary(and incompatible too).