Yes I know that all this exist, I created myself a lot of extensions for
Gnome3 like the Dropbox extension to have it on the top bar (never published
any because I didn't found them useful enough for other people since
alternatives exist already). The problem is that I think (as I said in my
last post a few seconds ago), that simple things should be done with simple
acts and not with extensions... Extensions (in my mind) should be for heavy
(not prepared) changes, like moving away the dock and putting it of the
Activities Window for example, or even remove the bottom notification bar.
And yes in that point I mostly agree with you, it is better to have
Javascript extensions than Gnome Schemes, even if it has it's down parts,
like for example the fact that, if we want to change something, we can't
navigate into a beautiful dconf-editor or gconf-editor... we need to find the
file of the extension (or of the part of the shell we want), understand
javascript programming, and edit the part hopping that it will not break
everything (and then be able to make sure that a new update will not
overwrite what we've done).
And yes Cinnamon is a good example of that :D (Even if I don't like
Cinnamon).
To answer your question.. To be honest, it is something that I've never
thought of. And before giving a final answer I would need to see the code
behind the shell. Because, let's be honest, Gnome-Shell (at least for me), is
very slow on netbooks (Unity isn't that much which is weird since it is slow
everywhere else), and Cinnamon has the exact same flaws... so... could it be
Mutter ? Could it be the Javascript base for visual transactions using OpenGL
? I don't really know. But I my little finger tells me that it is Mutter, or
else they would create a 2D version of the shell instead of the "forever
alone" Gnome Classic, that, in my opinion, can only involve into something
usable with works like the one did in Trisquel (seriously... I won't get
tired if saying this, but this is an amazing job :D I just hopped some HD and
more "beautiful" icons for the systray but that's another point).
PS: The idea was not the DE but only the Shell. I don't know if you've
already tested it, but you can use Unity2D everywhere where it can be
installed ! And by this I mean KDE, Gnome3, Gnome-Classic, Openbox, it works
on every Window Manager, and without losing is design :D And that is great !
That is my idea, something fresh, something new, written in QT (for example)
that could be use anywhere without more fragmentation since the only thing
that changes is the Shell, people could use any OS and any Window Manager
they wanted (not like Unity3D that requires Compiz to work).
