Well, I've tried GNOME 3 now...

[Tom Horsley]

...and my current theory is that GNOME 3 was funded by Dell
computers so when people hurl their computers off the highest
cliffs they can find and have to buy new ones, Dell profits
will go up :-).

As others have noted, there seems to be a lot of things that
you have to just know the magic keystrokes to find (hold down
Alt, hit ESC, etc), but the one keystroke that has been
traditional forever is hitting F1 for help, but alas, there
is no help, so the hope of discovering the mysteries of
GNOME 3 by actually reading the online help was dashed.

When I first logged in and started poking mysterious stuff
with sticks to try and make something happen, I found a
menu for all the programs I could run (a hideous one that filled
my entire 46 inch screen, but at least a menu). I used it
to start a terminal, but never found it again. Apparently
you can only use the menu once.

There are a slew of mysterious cryptic icons at the top
right of the screen, but nothing seems to have any tooltips,
so they remain mysterious.

My only real question now is how fast I can install the bits
I need to switch to my normal fvwm based X session and never
look at GNOME 3 again.