Thanks for your help guys.
I might go back to Trisquel Mini. It's functional and quick. Gnome Shell is
very pretty but it takes an extra second to do things (because the animations
are nicer, or when searching in the file browser it does a full search rather
than immediately attempting to match the first character in that directory).
For any search that is more complicated ... Synapse is great. Synapse makes
Gnome Shell's Activities/Search feature redundant.
For some reason I can't make Icedove work properly after reformatting. I'll
figure it out ... it's okay as long as my webmail works.
I'm surprised that Gnome Shell works on my computer, and I like it a lot, but
it's just not for me I think.
