GNOME3 in the default install is unusable, not as bad as Unity, but bad. Luckily with some minor tweaking it can be made to work quite nicely.

These are some assorted notes on how I got stuff working the way I like.

From a fresh Ubuntu install, install GNOME3:

sudo apt-get install gnome-desktop-environment

Then:

  1. Normal focus mode:

     gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences focus-mode 'sloppy'
 gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences auto-raise false

  2. Extensions: