I read the Phoronix article, quite suprising the results really that Unity is actually better than gnome but with KWin doing the best, makes me wish KDE was more stable to use day to day. I will most likely be keeping more of an eye on Unity and KDE over gnome or anything else.

Unity i could live with if it was made more stable, gnome though for sheer lack of real world user testing i despise right now, removing minimize ability...pfft, i minimize stuff all the time. Well then again i only just found a use for workspaces, so i guess i'm pretty slow when it comes to change.

Hey, I am using the Gnome Shell on Fedora 15 right now and I am not noticing much difference between gaming through it and just a plain OpenBox session. Maybe slightly worse, but at most by only about 5 or 10 frames or so, if even that much. Completely subjective benchmarking on my part of course, but just throwing that out there. If they are working on making the situation any better though, that would be appreciated. :D

To be honest, I was not really expecting to like the Gnome Shell, but I must admit it is beginning to grow on me. Granted, I have done quite a few tweaks already using the Gnome Tweak Tool to make it feel a little more homey as it were, but now that I know the keyboard shortcuts and how to operate it is quite a smooth experience. It is also kind of nice to see someone trying to take the desktop away from the "Windows 95" mold we have been kind of stuck in for the past sixteen years. It might not be a revolutionary change, but it is something new.

And by the way, yes I did restore the maximize and minimize buttons. And I have always been something of a Workspace addict, so I really can not understand anyone not using them. But I guess that is just me. :p

And as another "you win some, you lose some" demonstration, KDE uses about 10% more power than other DEs:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=uxklbuntu_power&num=1

But what is really dramatic about that test is that no one desktop environment ruled them all. Interesting. :)

In my experience, OpenGL games run much faster on Linux, than the same program would run on Windows. And I think I've only used gnome. But, that could also just be due to Window's lackluster support for OpenGL .

That greatly depends on your driver setup on both systems as well. In the end, the hope should be that all DE's basically stay out of the way when it comes to 3D performance.

Of course, with composting that is more difficult, but can still be done.

For having the "desktop out of the way" (and more importantly being able to switch between desktop and game correctly and avoid resolution problems on game crashes):
https://code.google.com/p/xgamer/
http://mikeysfog.wikispaces.com/XGamer
original ubuntuforums thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=699332

I haven't used it for a while, but it worked last time I tested it. Was useful to be able to access skype without quitting starcraft. :)

Interesting project, thank you for the link. I might just have an appropriate use for it.

EDIT: Does not build for me even when utilizing their official instructions:
[hamish@griffindor ~]$ cd Downloads
[hamish@griffindor Downloads]$ tar zxvf xgamer-*.tar.gz
xgamer/
xgamer/inc/
xgamer/inc/MyBuilder.pm
xgamer/Build.PL
xgamer/COPYING
xgamer/bin/
xgamer/bin/xgamer
xgamer/share/
xgamer/share/applications/
xgamer/share/applications/xgamer.desktop
xgamer/share/xgamer/
xgamer/share/xgamer/xgamer.glade
xgamer/share/xgamer/rc.xml
xgamer/share/xgamer/menu.xml
xgamer/share/xgamer/xgamer(2).glade
xgamer/share/xgamer/xgamer.xml
xgamer/share/pixmaps/
xgamer/share/pixmaps/xgamer.png
[hamish@griffindor Downloads]$ cd xgamer
[hamish@griffindor xgamer]$ perl Build.PL
Base class package "Module::Build" is empty.
    (Perhaps you need to 'use' the module which defines that package first,
    or make that module available in @INC (@INC contains: /usr/local/lib/perl5 /usr/local/share/perl5 /usr/lib/perl5 /usr/share/perl5 /usr/lib/perl5 /usr/share/perl5 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.0/i386-linux-thread-multi /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.0 /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.10.0/i386-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl .).
at inc/MyBuilder.pm line 9
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at inc/MyBuilder.pm line 9.
Compilation failed in require at Build.PL line 6.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at Build.PL line 6.
[hamish@griffindor xgamer]$

http://mikeysfog.wikispaces.com/XGamer

EDIT 2: I got a bit further, as I found the module I needed through yum and installed it. Fedora users should use the following command before building XGamer:

yum install openbox numlockx feh perl perl-Gtk2.i686 perl-Glib.i686 perl-XML-Twig.noarch perl-Module-Build

Unfortunately, while it does load, when I try to add a game the buttons become unresponsive. When I force quit the program, it gives me this terminal output:

[hamish@griffindor ~]$ xgamer

xgamer: Fatal IO error 11 (Resource temporarily unavailable) on X server :0.0.

[hamish@griffindor ~]$

Okay, as that last post is getting lengthy, I will post a new one.

While I have been unable to get the GUI to work, I loaded up the Perl script in a text editor and it had the following list of options:
    --help,-h,      show this help message
    --version,-v,    show version
    --list,-l        list available games
    --command,-c    execute a command instead of GAME

After reading this, I was able to get it to work by just executing games as normal commands like so:
xgamer --command quake3

It is not quite perfect, as to get out of the new session I need to send it a three fingered salute (CRTL-ALT-BACKSPACE), but other than that it seems to work great. So theoretically with this I could regain those five to ten frames I lost compared to a plain OpenBox session - as I can just load it in a plain OpenBox session. :p

EDIT: After reading the Man page, I was able to add a Game entry manually by creating a Config file and manually adding the required fields. When I load up the game entry, it acts exactly the same way as if I was loading it up with the Command parameter, meaning that once again I have to CRTL-ALT-BACKSPACE to return to my regular desktop. Is this similar to your experience KIAaze?

Well, it uses openbox anyway if I remember correctly. :)