That is the exact same spec as my laptop. I don't actually notice performance problems from gnome shell because I spend most of my time typing with short bursts of compilation etc. But when running top, gnome shell is always up there and has accumulated a huge amount of CPU time. More than X and the web browsers put together usually. Memory consumption varies so where I notice problems is when things have been swapped out because of gnome shell memory usage. I've never had it around 10gb but Alan Cox has https://plus.google.com/111104121194250082892/posts/5f5XXtRG...