The friendly guys from Linux Mint wrote some Gnome Shell extentions which make Gnome 3 feel more like Gnome 2. The good thing is that you can benefit from that even if you are using a different distribution. First of all, we will install the Linux Mint Shell Extensions for Gnome 3 (MGSE).

$ git clone https://github.com/linuxmint/MGSE.git
$ cd MGSE/
$ ./test

To make the Gnome Shell load the new extentions, reload Gnome Shell by hitting ALT-F2 and executing r.

Use gnome-tweak-tool to activate the extentions you want.