A look into the future - check out gnome-shell

I tried gnome-shell some days ago. I'm running it default on my laptop now actually. The design is intuitive and it is perfect for us that have several applications running at once and want to switch between all windows easily. It's very good-looking and allows you to work more effective than all others desktop managers I've tested.

If you're interested in what might be the beginning of a new GUI for operating systems, check out the official website: http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell

If you wan't to install it, here's instructions for Ubuntu 9.10:

1. Start "Software sources" (find in menu or: alt+f2, write "gksu --desktop /usr/share/applications/software-properties.desktop /usr/bin/software-properties-gtk")
2. Check "Community-maintained Open Source software (universe)" by clicking on it
3. Click on close
4. Open a terminal (alt+f2, write gnome-terminal)
5. Write "sudo apt-get update" in the terminal
   
6. Write "sudo apt-get install gnome-shell" in the terminal
7. Now it's installed, just write "gnome-shell --replace" in the terminal to start it.

If you want to make it default:

1. System --> Preferences --> Startup applications
2. Click on add, write "gnome-shell --replace" in the command field. Write what you want in the other fields.

Be prepared that gnome-shell might crash your system if you're unlucky. It didn't crash my system, but everything got very slow for a while and then gnome-shell was shut down, writing "Software rasterizer detected, abortingaborting and using fallback: /usr/bin/metacity". Note that I ran gnome-shell from a live cd without proprietary drivers for my ATI HD4850. Probably this caused the problems. I haven't had any problems on my laptop, used gnome-shell on it for almost two weeks.

BTW if you run Fedora 12 you can enable gnome-shell by entering desktop effects and click on a button.