“First if you didn hear about ‘Mate”, it is a fork of Gnome 2
which is compatible with Gnome 3. Thanks to MATE, you can run both
versions of Gnome on the same system.MATE is brand new, it’s not
completely stable yet, and it’s missing a few parts. It’s being
actively maintained and with close collaboration between the MATE
developers and Linux Mint. With time the project will gain maturity
and provide users with a traditional and solid desktop
experience.For “MGSE” (Mint Gnome Shell Extensions) is a desktop layer on
top of Gnome 3 that makes it possible for you to use Gnome 3 in a
traditional way. You can disable all components within MGSE to get
a pure Gnome 3 experience, or you can enable all of them to get a
Gnome 3 desktop that is similar to what you’ve been using before.
Of course you can also pick and only enable the components you like
to design your own desktop.You can install Mate and MGSE extension
(LinuxMint new Menu) in Ubuntu 11.10 by using the
Mintrespository