For at least 3 years now Ubuntu Gnome has been my distribution of choice. It works fairly well out-of-the-box and I don't have to use the mouse too much. However, a few things annoyed me enough to make me look for a solution and about 4 months I found them. I've been using a couple of extensions for Gnome Shell that simply makes it just that little bit better, and installing them takes less than a minute.
Maximus Two
Removes the title bar on maximised windows. It gives you at least one more line in a maximised terminal window and makes gVim look like it should. Rejoice!
No Topleft Hot Corner
Why this isn't a build-in extension beats me. Actually why hot corners even exist when running Ubuntu Gnome on a desktop PC or laptop is a mystery to me. It is quite simply annoying and having multiple monitor turns the feature into a pure irritation trigger. No need for that silly top-left hot corner, just press your Meta key when you need that functionality. Do you ever? You have multiple desktops, use them! :P