You could have said the same thing about installing linux on a personal PC, years ago - hell, you can still say it today.

Perhaps the person wants to learn linux, or experiment with it in a new space. That's a perfectly reasonable way for a geek to spend his time.

Have you tried pressing Alt-Esc?

Don't like alt-esc? Make it alt-tab then (even though, I would bet in nearly every quantitative way, the alt-tab/alt-~ system makes workflows faster). But different strokes... System Settings -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts - change the binding to your hearts content. Not hard people. Bitching about non-problems is stupid!

You do know you can change the alt-tab settings to work with windows - not apps - straight from the stock keyboard shortcuts panel in all of about 2 seconds, right?

Typing commands or using keyboard shortcuts or just in general maneuvering around like a power user are not things that are mutually exclusive with fancy GUI's and big buttons. Most desktops - gnome 3, osx, etc provide ample capability for both. Can't speak for unity, never tried it..

I think its an exciting time for desktop computer interfaces... its a good thing the desktop is branching out, and becoming something new.

Try a distro that tracks with RHEL, like CentOS or Scientific Linux? Or there's always vanilla debian.

sudo yum install gnome-shell-extension-cpu-temperature

Not sure that takes care of all your requirements, but it gets you at least somewhat there.
Fedora packages a lot of extensions for gnome-shell - I expect that the number and quality of them will only get better and better.

sudo yum groupinstall XFCE
sudo yum groupinstall LXDE


Or just use Gnome 3 - I've never heard so much irrational complaining over what is a pretty solid (and very customizable) desktop etc....

* ctrl-enter (in activities)
* right-click -> new window (in activities)
* ctrl-n (from terminal)

C'mon people... learn to use the thing before you knock it.

Alt-tab works beautifully. Alt-~ switches between open windows of the same app. Its quite lovely. And there's two more way to start another terminal (or another window of any app) that others haven't mentioned:

1) Drag the terminal icon to the desktop you want to launch it on 2) Invoke activities screen, begin typing "terminal", then while terminal is highlighted.. brilliantly easy.

XFCE is alright, but I think Gnome 3 is much better. Linus' rants against gnome 3 were rather childish and more than that - just plain idiotic. The inverter of the Linux kernel can't be bothered to learn enough about the desktop enough to discover that his big gripe could be solved with a ctrl-click or the dragging of a icon? That knowledge wasn't buried in the basement of some abandoned building with a sign saying "Beware of Leopard" posted on the door - any cursory, superficial glance at some Gnome 3 docs will yield the information before it was even a question in his mind.

... but it didn't work.

Emacs controls all its ex's.

Unfortunately, I think the support for YEC (young earth creationism) (and species of it) is far wider than you presume (at least in the US). And the outright rejection of the theory of evolution for theological reasons has even wider support still. IIRC, something like 55% of the US population reject evolution, and something like 40% believe in some variant of YEC.

I was surprised to learn this, being raised Catholic.. and Catholics don't necessarily have any theological problem with evolution or old earth theories, per se (though many do). But Catholics are a minority in the US, despite being the largest denomination worldwide. Protestants make up the majority, and support for literal/historical interpretations of Genesis have much more support in the Protestant world.

Or buy a Mac (or use existing Mac), download Linux and dual boot and/or wipe out OSX completely!

If he wants to run it bare metal, he can do that on a Mac laptop too - he can dual boot, or do linux all on its own. Mac laptops generally make great Linux machines.

The other option is to run Linux ON a Mac laptop. Most Mac's work pretty well with Linux. Sometimes newer models have some issues, but they usually get ironed out pretty fast, because there's lots of demand for them too.

While OSX is technically UNIX, it is much easier to do many Unixy things on Linux or traditional BSD's.