Installing the new Gnome Shell is fairly easy. If you are using Ubuntu you simply install Gnome Shell from your synaptic package manager and run it from the command line. If Gnome Shell doesn’t show up in your package manager make sure you are using the Community-maintained repository along with the Canonical repository. After you are finished installing Gnome Shell you will need to disable compiz and other windows composers. In Ubuntu goto System > Preferences > Appearances and disable it under the Desktop Effects tab. Once that is done you can open up a shell and run gnome-shell –replace & to start up the Gnome Shell. This will replace you currently running windows manager.

Below is a screenshot of the application switcher. You click the “Activities” button in the upper left hand corner and you’ll get a fancy pop-out with all your running applications.

Notes:
For some reason I can not add anything to the top bar. I can see my tray icons on the right hand side but I can’t left or right click anywhere. It may be because I am running this is a temporary window manager.

Also keep in mind that Ubuntu will be using this by default in their next Ubuntu release (latest rumor at least).