Gimp 2.7.3 has been great to me. It has some AWESOME new features, especially for tablet users. Biggest on my list is a really amazing mapping matrix. You can check mappings and draw out graphs outlining the interaction between the effects. A lot of people are apparently pretty excited about the single window mode (I could care less, but whatever). I was reluctant to jump in on it, but I have had zero problems with it so far (and have been using, at least here and there, for a couple months). There is definitely quite a soup of technologies going around here. I'll try to help clarify to the best of my understanding (someone correct me if I'm wrong). Gnome is a desktop environment. Up till now, most distros have been using Gnome 2. However, Gnome 3 is now in action, and there are some great new features that come along with it. It has been designed to be more flexible and modular, as well as modern (from a technical perspective). Gnome Shell is a desktop environment built on top of Gnome 3 (it can be thought of as a "shell" around it), and does so in order to bring a more modern flavor/experience (think moving in the same general direction as Unity, but along a different route). Unity too is now built on Gnome 3 (as of Ocelot -- if I'm not mistaken). Ubuntu Classic was what came up when trying to switch desktop versions to the non-unity Gnome when logging into Ubuntu on 11.4. This interface is also called Gnome Panel, and is now basically the fallback for Gnome when Gnome Shell cannot be loaded. Both Metacity and Compiz are window managers. One of the most fundamental distinctions is that Compiz is a compositing window manager, which basically means that it can take advantage of graphics cards and such in order to produce all kinds of effects quickly. Unity is effectively based on compiz. Gnome did use Metacity by default, but now uses Mutter (built on Clutter) for the Gnome Shell. I'm not sure if in Fallback/Panel mode it still uses Metacity or not. Bottom line - to install gnome shell and the classic gnome do the following sudo apt-get install gnome-shell sudo apt-get install gnome-session-fallback You should then have the Gnome Shell and Gnome Panel options when you click the little gear on logging into Ubuntu. Best Chris On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 1:00 AM, Andrew Kay