Alternative for Multiple Workspaces and Terminals

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This is an old thread, but the OP and others who stumble across this might like Awesome. It's a highly configurable tiling window manager.

Well if you're into terminal multiplexing and tabbing I could recommend tmux or screen but you'll need to learn them. Easier alternative is to use program called terminator which is classic terminal window that also gives you the possibility to split it as you wish.

If you need something to manage all of your programs into tiles that you need some tilling window manager for that instead of Gnome. I've used Awesome WM for a long time so I'm a little bit biased towards it. Another good and arguably easy to start window manager that supports tiling is i3wm so you could also check it out ;-)

Hope I helped with some of the suggestions.

You might want to take a look at DevilsPie: https://wiki.gnome.org/DevilsPie because it allows you to place windows on specific desktops, exactly where you want them and so on. I played with it a few years ago, but never took the time it needed to get everything Just Right. (It does take a bit of work, unless it's advanced considerably since then.) I suspect that you'll need a bit of trickery to get multiple terms open in different places, such as using alias to give each instance a distinct name.