14 DAY TRIAL // A few days ago, Adam Jackson announced on the Fedora mailing list that their daily build ISO images will come with a version of GNOME Shell that doesn't require a 3D hardware driver to run.
This means that everyone will be able to run GNOME 3's new interface, GNOME Shell, on any computer, without a proprietary 3D video driver. It also means that it will run perfectly on virtual guest machines.
This is still work in progress, but it will definitely be available with the upcoming Fedora 17 (Beefy Miracle) operating system, and probably with other Linux distributions as well.
"There are probably bugs! I've done some quick tests on the hardware I have handy and in kvm, and things do appear to work. [...] The vesa driver should get this right for you already, as should cirrus under virt." - said Adam Jackson.