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.

If all goes according to plan, Ubuntu 10.10 will sport Gnome 3, which represents a radical overhaul of Ubuntu's default graphical user interface in the form of Gnome Shell, when it debuts a year from now.  In order get a taste of what this desktop of the future will look like, I've spent the last few days using the development version.  Here's what I've found.

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 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.

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

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.

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been working with Jon McCann, Jeremy Perry, and Owen Taylor on developing a usability testing plan for GNOME Shell. It’s a work-in-progress, and I wanted to make a quick posting about the effort and where it’s going.

GNOME Shell-- Jon McCann from Red Hat ran the first Shell session, on design. An amazing amount of progress had been made since the hackfast one year prior that spawned the Shell project, but some major tasks remained.

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).