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Linux Mint 12 to Blend GNOMEs 2 & 3
dartttt writes "Linux Mint 12 'Lisa' will come with its own customized desktop and it will be based on Gnome 3. The core desktop will be based on a series of Gnome Shell extensions called 'MGSE' (Mint Gnome Shell Extensions) that will provide a layer on top of Gnome 3. MGSE also includes additional extensions such as a media player indicator, and multiple enhancements to Gnome 3. Thus Linux Mint 12 will be more like a hybrid desktop balancing traditional desktop and new modern technologies."
Why don't they just fork the GNOME project into small and large form factors? That might be a misnomer - its more like close and far displays, because you would probably like a Gnome 3 style interface when you are 10 - 15' away from the screen. Hopefully the devs working on Unity and Gnome realize that end users just want customization. Nothing wrong with introducing start menu search and OSX style docks but let the user decide how they want their desktop configured, because you never know what they want. I use XFCE right now, but the lack of a built in global application search drives me insane, and the inability to get a Windows 7 / Unity esque task bar where I can pin applications rather than have duplicate quick launch / active windows buttons is a feature I miss. The inability to drag / drop apps to a panel is also extremely cumbersome. Then again, you can't really complain about all of the X desktop environments because you could just go fork the project and fix them yourselves if you didn't like something.
Goatse. Don't click
I herd you like linux on the desktop, so I put an unprecedented number of dubiously thought out desktops on your linux.
Unfortunately, that makes about as much sense as the current state of gnome and gnome-derived desktops...
Gnome 3 is shiny, elegant and modern looking. It’s a sleek desktop but it comes with a few problems:
[...] So with this in mind, Gnome 3 in Linux Mint 12 needs to let you interact with your computer in two different ways: the traditional way, and the new way, and it’s up to you to decide which way you want to use.
For this, we developed “MGSE” (Mint Gnome Shell Extensions), which is a desktop layer on top of Gnome 3 that makes it possible for you to use Gnome 3 in a traditional way. You can disable all components within MGSE to get a pure Gnome 3 experience, or you can enable all of them to get a Gnome 3 desktop that is similar to what you’ve been using before. Of course you can also pick and only enable the components you like to design your own desktop.
The main features in MGSE are:
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
I've been slowly switching to Linux Mint on my machines and I've found some pretty annoying bugs with the Gnome version of Mint that I didn't find in Ubuntu or Debian. It seems to me that the Mint devs may have already done too many customizations to the desktop. In some cases, I've moved to LXDE because it's more stable.
So, we'll see how this turns out, but there has to be a healthy community of devs around MGSE to deal with all the problems that will no doubt arise...as Gnome 3 begins to drift further away from the Gnome 2.x codebase, MGSE is gonna need to do more heavy lifting to keep everything working smoothly.
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
Goatse warning.
You only altered your nick by a character and posted the same message and link?.. I expect more from trolls. At least change up the wording or something. This is sheer laziness.
Hey, look! It's Bono's brother.
gnome-tweak-tool, despite being well out of the way, still offers very little in the way of customization.
customization requires people to put on a developer hat and write 'extensions'.
Despite all this time no one has restored 'search by window title' functionality (there is one, but it doesn't interact with the window preview view, which is still well behind the state of KDE or compiz). We also still don't have a 'preview all windows belonging to a single app' despite the lengths of having a 'dock' group windows together that provides an intuitive trigger for such a behavior (this behavior is in KDE and compiz).
I honestly would not mind the experience given a rich set of themes and those two particular behaviors added. On the flipside, I do know many people consider the overhead of the graphical strategy to be too much, and being told an even more resource intensive software OpenGL rendering engine is going to be the answer is just putting salt in the wound.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
A very good synopsis can be found here. It will incorporate MATE, a fork of Gnome 2.32.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Again with the goatse? We get it guy, you're edgy and cool because you're ten years late to a meme.
Hey, look! It's Bono's brother.
Both will be available but default will be GNOME Shell with Mint Extensions.
Mint is just Ubuntu + additional repositories. Just add the Mint repos manually and you'll have it.
Once extensions.gnome.org is up and running, I guess the Mint Extensions will be hosted there for everybody.
Mint is, however LMDE isn't. I'm not sure how long Mint is going to remain around, seeing as it seems to be diverging from Ubuntu as it becomes more and more obvious that Canonical is batshit insane. At some point it's probably going to be less work for mint to just standardize itself around the Debian Edition.
You must be new here.
Mint and its devs have had a bit of thought, and unlike some others I could mention actually have a core idea on what to give users. But then Mint has for quite a long time been a very good distro specifically for end users. And frankly, Linux needs at least one to be so.
So, in the next round of new Distro updates, Mint will again top the distrowatch charts, and deservedly so. The other distro's need to start taking note, becasue they think they are leading and others will follow. In truth, Mint is leading because Mint's process and view on users is ballpark correct, and many of distro's are off target.
As for Ubuntu and Unity. Well. Not much to be said there. They need to learn the lesson but seem to be determined to drop themselves down the distrowatch chart.
We`re all equal
In Gnome 3 you're forced to open just one,
Huh? gnome-terminal --disable-factory works in my gnome 3 and gnome 2 system identically. I'm unaware of another way to select all-in-one or distinct processes in either environment...
which is a disaster for people who need to use the command line a lot.
I get uncomfortable with the reliability implication of all my terminals being beholden to a single process as complex as gnome-terminal, but calling it a 'disaster' is a bit much. I currently have about 70 terminals open under a single process and it hasn't broken me. There *was* a file descriptor leak that was pretty nasty at one point, but with that addressed I haven't seen anything that afflicted me in practice, even if in theory it's a little less isolated than I would like.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
no, that's brilliantly adding unnecessary steps to what should be a *single fucking click*, which is of course very dim-witted.
Skip the backwards, get on to KDE
Flamebait? No, not necessarily.
See "Sabayon 7 Review / Overview Kde +Gnome" at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyBsUrxxEYk
And if you thing the GUI sucks: Modify the JS files and get a completely different work flow with minimal work.
Yeah, because every user wants to have to learn Javascript in order to fix a broken GUI.
Not really a problem, their project will be forked off by people who want a useable well-designed UI. Those distros that give alternatives will grow. The arrogant GNOME assholes will find themselves twirling batons and holding banners and leading a parade of no one down the street, watched by a crowd of no one.
Even worse, how utterly mainframe era in thinking, to want to refine and make even more robust what is proven, to add new features without breaking backwards compatibility.
Note we're still in the era of the mainframe, the mainframe can run the latest software technologies (even can run GNU/Linux), can cluster and share storage and do distributed computing using latest tech, while also running decades old wares. There's a lesson there for the GNOME dev scatterbrains.
That Mint team has Debian releases, it shows they are planning for a Canonical-less future. I for one welcome our new Canonical/Ubuntu/Unity shunning overlords
What is the obsession with Windows 95 being the gold standard on which all desktop environments need to be based???
I for one really like Gnome 3 because it is finally no longer a Windows 95 clone like Gnome 2. I'm sorry to people whose first computer used Windows 95 or any of the other Windows 95 based desktops (like Windows 98, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, KDE or Gnome 2.x), folks there are other ways to use a computer.
So, Mint took Gnome 3, and made it look like Windows 95 again, freaking great!.
And if you thing the GUI sucks: Modify the JS files and get a completely different work flow with minimal work.
Yeah, because every user wants to have to learn Javascript in order to fix a broken GUI.
Idiot. RTFA!
JS makes it easy for distributors to modify the user experience. Users can just switch distributors (or wait for the official GNOME Shell Extensions website to go up).
Mint 12 will provide a very different GNOME 3 user experience in Mint 12 (that's what TFA is about!!) with minimal work required.
Why are so many people still running Windows XP? Yea, Vista was a disaster, but Win7 is actually decent. But people don't want to move. The reason is that they are tired of having to re-learn how to do things each time a new user interface comes out. Why do open-source GUI people copy from Apple and Windows? Because they are trying to make the user experience in their desktop OS likable for that audience. BUT, they are PISSING OFF the same people that got used to the old Linux/Unix way of doing things. One of the problems is the self-selection of 'improvements' by the GUI developers, who are people who want to make things 'better' ('Kamtrya!'). The rest of us are more concerned with getting tasks done, and don't want to be bothered with the learning curve. Customization ability is fine, but the default behavior should be that of Tradition, with an option to set things back to 'traditional' in any customization.
I don't care about rounded corners, opacity, and lots of screen candy. What I was is speed, reliability, consistency and the ability to change text size/layout within a window, and also to have windows maintain their aspect ratio as the default behavior when appropriate. I also like the idea of being able to focus on a background window. I'd like an 'unclose' option to bail me out when I accidentally close a window, but I know that's difficult to do properly. But please, just focus on the speed, reliability, and consistency.
The extensions do make Gnome Shell look a lot more like Gnome 2, meaning a menu and taskbar. And, frankly, it seems good to me. I doubt they will be able to make the Shell more customizable, which is a shame, but what I like is Mint's attitude of not wanting to alienate its user base. At least someone out there is being wise and/or listening to complaints.
Stability? (Gave up on Kubuntu long ago, never tried Mint/KDE)
Mint KDE never had any special KDE packages. Mint's base system is exactly the same as Ubuntu's -- it just ships roughly a month after Ubuntu which means a month of bugfix patches. Mint KDE makes absolutely no sense. The only Mint KDE project that makes sense is the planned Mint Debian Edition because Debian never has current SC packages.
I lost too many hours tweaking config files for twm, ctwm, vtwm, and fvwm. Dragging icons to configure that layout it nice. Restarting the window manager to test a config file is not nice. Having the window manager die because of some typo in the config file is not nice.
That said, my needs are simple. I don't even want a file manager.
I want a taskbar on an otherwise empty (adjustable solid color) screen. I want a start menu that gets updated as I install/remove packages, ideally without restart but I'll settle for restarting. I want a 24-hour digital clock. I want a desktop switcher. I want a launcher button for 100% genuine xterm, not some defective (but pretty) imposter.
I want rounded window border corners, both top and bottom. I want window borders that clearly change to indicate the active window. I want focus-follows-mouse. I don't want any sort of see-through transparency bullshit making things harder to read.
It shouldn't need to be said, but... NO NOISES!
GUI config is sadly needed for the network, since modern Linux does some convoluted disaster involving D-BUS and udev and other weird shit. Probably the same is true of modern audio, since some ass couldn't leave audio working simply and sanely like it was 15 years ago.
That's been my dilemma. I'd like to use Debian due to apt-get, but they tend to prefer Gnome, which is unacceptable for me. Either give me KDE, or give me GNUSTEP (I'd like Etoille whenever it's ready). If I want a KDE, more often than not, I end up w/ a RH derived distro, and there, the problem is dealing w/ those gazillion yumm dependencies. I like the ease w/ which Debian can install things, and I like the ease and extent to which I can customize KDE. I'd like something that gives me both.