[HTC Wildfire S] no.human.being:
My machine is running on Fedora 16. It has a very cool new user interface called "GNOME Shell" (in version 3.2) that replaces the entire software stack around X11, which was classically used on POSIX systems for handling the graphical user interface. "GNOME Shell" is software by the GNU project and it was (like many software stacks that are replacing classic Unix software) implemented mainly because of licensing issues with the "classic" environments based on X11. The cool thing about "GNOME Shell" is that you have infinite virtual desktops between which you can drag windows around and there are lots of keyboard shortcuts.

If you first come to this new interface from an installation that was based on X11, you'll find it quite confusing, since it works differently. It borrows the "exposee view" from OSX, but the rest is all really unique, so it doesn't resemble any user interface you might have worked with. For example you can no longer place files on the desktop, as the desktop is no longer a subprocess of the file manager. You can also no longer minimize windows, since there's no "taskbar" to minimize them to. There's no "maximize" or "restore" button either, as you maximize a window by dragging its title bar to the top of the screen or restore it by pulling the title bar of a maximized window down. Drag it to the left or the right of the screen to get a "split screen" view with the windows maximized to their respective half of the screen. There's also no "menu" from which you could start programs. Programs are started via keyboard shortcuts (you'll do this 99.9 % of the time once you've gotten used to all the shortcuts) or a so-called "dash" which is opened by moving the mouse to the topmost left corner of the screen (you won't do this) or, you guessed it, a keyboard shortcut (and that's what you'll do) and takes the entire screen when open. However, in most cases you won't use the dash and just use shortcuts.

The GNU people have decided that the time has come to actually start from scratch and throw all the habits of "classic" user interfaces over board. So at first this will all feel very weird, but the design choices are actually very wise and will really boost your productivity once you've gotten used to the new workflow. Why minimize a window when you have an unlimited amount of desktops? Just move it over to a desktop where you don't see it. And everything is based on vector graphics and rendered in realtime, so it can all be scaled and moved around as you wish without becoming pixelated.

And the implementation of this virtual desktop stuff is pure perfection. Even the miniature views for them are actual downscaled versions of the desktops rendered in realtime. Just put a video player onto one desktop and see the video rendered live and without any latency in the miniature view. This is just amazing and it all looks extremely polished. The virtual desktop stuff is very cool when you're on a workstation with multi monitor support, as you can keep one of the monitors "fixed" and keep it as an "intermediate store" for windows while you rotate the virtual workspaces on the others. So instead of dragging between virtual desktops, you just drag it over to the other monitor, switch virtual desktops on the main monitor, then drag it back. This is probably not how you're supposed to do it, but for me it's more intuitive and I get it done faster than moving the windows around among the virtual desktops. :D

This is why it tends not to be so cool when I'm only having a single monitor available. :D

However, "GNOME Shell" currently requires a graphics driver supporting DRM (direct rendering mode) to function. When this is not present, it will enter a "fallback" mode which is quite lousy (much worse than classic GNOME). So it's not good when you're about to run it in a virtual machine. But on the host operating system it's just gorgeous. :D

And even though it requires a DRM driver, it's not demanding at all. I'm currently running it on the processor graphics of a Sandy Bridge machine and it's absolutely flawless, as well as smooth and responsive as hell. In fact it's more responsive than classic GNOME, which seems weird given all the "eye candy" that's there in "GNOME Shell", but it's probably because all the components are tightly integrated and, all coming from the same developers, taylored to work with each other and probably got months of optimization work in them. It's just not good for virtual machines (and as far as I know it currently doesn't support VNC as VNC hooks into the X11 software stack and "GNOME Shell" is not based on X11). With the next release of "GNOME 3.4" (which will likely ship with Fedora 17 by default), "GNOME Shell" will no longer require DRM drivers and as such probably become a viable choice for virtual machines as well.