In this paper, we investigate properties of the bounded derived category of finite dimensional modules over a gentle or skew-gentle algebra. We show that the Rouquier dimension of the derived category of such an algebra is at most one. Using this result, we prove that the Rouquier dimension of an arbitrary tame projective curve is equal to one, too. Finally, we elaborate the classification of indecomposable objects of the (possibly unbounded) homotopy category of projective modules of a gentle algebra.