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Linux Mint 12 Released Today
An anonymous reader writes "Linux Mint 12 was released today. It includes the new 'MGSE' (Mint Gnome Shell Extensions), a desktop layer on top of Gnome 3 that makes it possible for you to use Gnome 3 in a traditional way. MGSE's Gnome-2-Like experience includes features such as the bottom panel, the application menu, the window list, a task-centric desktop and visible system tray icons. MGSE is a 180-degree turn from the desktop experience the Gnome Team is developing with Gnome-Shell. At the heart of the Gnome-Shell is a feature called 'the Overview': 'The Shell is designed in order to minimize distraction and interruption and to enable users to focus on the task at hand. A persistent window list or dock would interfere with this goal, serving as a constant temptation to switch focus. The separation of window switching functionality into the overview means that an effective solution to switching is provided when it is desired by the user, but that it is hidden from view when it is not necessary.' The popularity of Mint 12 with MGSE may be an excellent barometer as to whether users prefer a task-centric or application-centric desktop."
will it offer any benefit over just using GNOME 2?
I am wondering whether desktop Linux matters in these times. For some it does I am sure, as evidenced on distrowatch . It is the most popular distro now, after pushing Ubuntu to second place.
In my little world though, Linux is inconsequential. I just do not care that much any more.
I [still] employ Windows XP at work, and use Windows 7 in addition to an Asus Eee Pad transformer at home, where I spend most of my time on the net.
I still have to ask the general public whether, desktop Linux still matters. Does it?
Many Gtk2 apps have been ported to Gtk3 -- Gedit, Shotwell, etc. Getting Gtk3 to run on a Gnome 2 desktop isn't as easy as it could have been.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Why do people make a big deal about a distro's default desktop? You can install whatever you want.
Seems to me that a combination of XFCE and KDE cover about 90% of the bases. XFCE if you want lightweight and minimal footprint, KDE if you want the power-user desktop with bells an whistles and customizable to hell and back.
Why is everyone re-inventing the boat, poorly? There *IS* a loss associated with having too many choices, no matter what some people will tell you. It fragments the market, fragments the resources spent on making each one solid, leads to end user confusion so people go back to the nice simple worlds of OSX or Windows where they don't have to think about such choices.
It's just a huge drawback and detriment to the Linux community to say, "Hey! You can pick from any one of these 68 different desktop environments - of course, every one of them is halfassed and has a crapton of problems because the community is split into tiny little fragments. But hey, you've got CHOICE! If you don't like one of the buggy 68 ones you picked, just pick another! It's all up to you!"
'The Shell is designed in order to minimize distraction and interruption and to enable users to focus on the task at hand. A persistent window list or dock would interfere with this goal, serving as a constant temptation to switch focus.'
Jesus Christ, GNOME! You're not my boss and you're definitely not my wife. So, unless you're willing either to pay me or put out, kindly stop trying to tell me what to do.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
I finally gave up on both KDE and Gnome. XUbuntu is fast, functional and pretty, and I've located replacements for everything I need that use only Qt or GTK. I've also switched 2 of my 3 kids laptops, and I think I'll move my small company from KDE to XFCE over time.
Goodbye to all of you that created this mess. And thank you for sending me to XFCE!
Does anyone know why the default menus are so oddly organized - such as the catch-all "Other" sub-menu being in the middle of the menu, and containing important stuff like the Update Manager and Synaptic Package Manager?
Is this menu organization something Mint is inheriting from GNOME 3? In Mint 11 the system stuff was in some System menu where you more expect to find it.
I was expecting the menu to be cleaned up during the Mint 12 beta, but it's still there know in what appears to be the release version.
If you have one visionary with great tech skills and average taste, you get an average desktop with hundreds of millions of users - Windows. If you have a visionary with average tech skills and great taste, you get a great desktop with tens of millions of users - Mac OS. If you have a hundred visionaries with great tech skills and varying tastes, you get a hundred different desktops with quality all over the map, each with dozens of users - Linux.
Mint has "fixed" a lot thats broken by design about the new Gnome. But I have a question to direct at the Gnome 3 / Unity developers. Why the sudden corporate-like totalitarian control over the UI? Is this a misguided attempt to emulate the meteoric success of iOS and Android by just copying the Apple/Google/Microsoft corporate control over how users use the desktop?
I find this another symptom of "Free" software that's open in source becoming more and more closed in run-time.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
smartphones, tablets and laptops - all smaller screen devices where a traditional screen-real-estate-hungry user interface isn't the best option
I agree with you as for pocket-size devices such as phones and pocket tablets, and to a lesser extent for larger finger-driven capacitive tablets, but not so much for netbooks. The traditional desktop interface is designed for screens at least 9 inches diagonal VIS, like the old black-and-white Mac computers. Netbooks and larger tablets happen to have that much real estate.
This is the market that Ubuntu is obviously targeting with Unity
I agree with a few Unity design decisions, such as putting application launchers and the window list in an autohidden panel at the left, and have replicated them on my Xubuntu installation. I disagree with others, such as the dock extending all the way up to cover the web browser's back button, the typing-driven application chooser (which usually ends up starting a spreadsheet when I want a calculator) and the extra click needed to open the list of applications by category, the inability to start a new instance of an application without plugging in an external 3-button mouse, and the mystery-meat navigation that hides the menu bar.
But, that said, there's always going to be a demand for a more traditional general purpose compute devices, for development work if nothing else
But how much extra are device makers going to charge for "more traditional general purpose compute devices" that aren't cryptographically locked down from being capable of "development work"? The debug consoles used by video game developers already cost one or two orders of magnitude more than retail consoles. Will students, hobbyists, and startups still be able to afford a general-purpose computer of their own?
In all honesty, have you actually tried to use GNOME 3?
I've used all sorts of desktop environments over the years, and GNOME 3 is by far the worst I've ever used. I'm not even joking when I say that CDE from the early 1990s was easier to use, more efficient to use, and provided a much more enjoyable user experience.
If there are performance improvements in GNOME 3, I sure as fuck didn't experience them. It was noticeably slower on my system than KDE 4 is. It wasn't just one or two apps, either. Everything about GNOME 3 feels so much slower.
The desktop search is useless, just like it is on Windows and Mac OS X. It's a stupid paradigm. It takes the worst of shell auto-completion, and tries to make it act like a web search engine, with spectacularly shitty results.
The themes support is a step backward. It has only made it easier for theme designers to use crap like gradients, curved corners and transparency. While these may help make GNOME 3 more hipster-compatible, they do absolutely nothing to make the resulting UI more effective in any way.
It's also a royal pain in the ass to develop for, although this has always been the case for GNOME. GObject is a pathetic hack. If you want object-oriented C, then just use C++ or Objective-C. But that was apparently too sensible for the GNOME developers.
XFCE is where it's at. It hits that sweet spot between functionality, simplicity, and excellent performance. GNOME 3, on the other hand, manages to be the worst at everything possible.
What if my apps *are* task-centric? I still with gnome2, but I may very well go with xfce4. I nearly lost it on gnome when they went from 1.x and plain text-file configs. I had spen a long time making it behave exactly as I wanted to, and the "upgrade" broke stuff all over the place.
C|N>K
i switched to mint11. i lasted about one day, until the number of bugs in mint overwhelmed me. then i went back to ubuntu oneiric, where the number of bugs, mostly in gnome3, is frightening, but at least more tolerable than mint.
YMMV
Can I add quick launchers to my bars? I want one-click launchers as a first level task. I don't use desktop icons, because 99% of the time there's something in front of them. I just want a handy way to launch a very commonly used application without digging into menus or typing the exact name into a search box. If you can be more productive than a single click to a fixed point on my monitor, I'm sold.
Bye!
I never liked having to track every individual window in the taskbar, awkwardly managing launchers and windows and virtual desktops. I find that GNOME 3 is a very usable and simple desktop environment that gets the work done. Much more so than Unity. I am the devil incarnate ?
> There *IS* a loss associated with having too many choices, no matter what some people will tell you.
There is, balanced by benefits that outweigh the costs IMHO. Having multiple desktops and distributions means we can survive one going mad. Compare and contrast what is happening with GNOME3 and Unity with what is going on in the Windows and Mac worlds. When Win8 ships, those people have no choice, they get a tablet interface and it matters not if they like it or not. Eventually the Mac peeps know they get iOS and there ain't nothing they can do. On the other hand we told Fedora and Ubuntu to FOAD and picked something else. Most fedora users seem to be going with XFCE, Ubuntu users appear to be migrating in mass to Mint. Because we had a choice.
Imagine instead developers had listened to the siren song some people have been singing for a decade now, that GNOME and KDE had long since merged into one 'perfect' desktop, the small fry had folded up shop and got on board the One True Desktop. Then that One True Desktop caught tablet fever. Our options? All bad.
Right now we have multiple options in every major category of Free Software. Linus goes mad we adopt one of the BSD kernels. We have multiple web browsers, email clients, desktop environments, plumbing layers. About the only part that isn't redundant is X, no real options for that currently, but Wayland is under development.
Democrat delenda est
Stop demanding that I upgrade and reboot.
In some cases, if you do not upgrade and reboot, a recently discovered security hole in the kernel or a widely used library may result in your machine being compromised. What's the polite way to notify you of this? But I agree with much of what else you have to say, which is why I switched to Xubuntu for the 11.10 cycle.
If you believed the arguments people raise against the Chromebook, you'd think we all lived half our lifetimes in airplanes that don't have wi-fi
I don't fly, but I do live much of my life away from Wi-Fi coverage. Citilink buses in Fort Wayne, Indiana, have no Wi-Fi, and the APs in the shopping center where I wait for the next bus are locked and not for shoppers' use. The only restaurant within walking distance of my employer (without crossing a major highway) likewise has no Wi-Fi. I cope by 1. coding in Python and 2. reading archives of web sites that I've scraped for offline reading.
This link just floored me.
https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design/FAQ#Why_no_window_list_or_dock.3F
"A persistent window list or dock would interfere with this goal, serving as a constant temptation to switch focus."
Who wrote this? How did this become the official position of GNOME 3 officially?
On the one hand, I sort of respect that they aren't letting tradition shackle them. They are trying to boldly change things, to make something really new and really better.
On the other hand, they have changed a bunch of stuff and made it worse!
They got rid of some stuff that takes up space; and I always use GNOME on a giant desktop display with lots of room to spare. Even my netbook has a 10.1" screen and I don't begrudge a few pixels for a window list.
They got rid of the window list, it seems, because it is a distraction. But I am used to it being there and I don't notice it when I'm working; whereas with GNOME 3 I have no option but to have a distracting animation of windows flying about and arranging themselves any time I want to change apps. I have to hit the logo key, watch a dazzling display, find the window I want, click on it, and watch it zoom to full size. This is less distracting than clicking on the button for the window I want, and having it instantly be the topmost window? (Answer: no, it's more distracting, not less. At least that's true for me. But GNOME gives no option; this is the new One True Way that we must all use.)
If the GNOME 3 developers ever build a car, it won't have a steering wheel, a brake pedal, and a gas pedal. They will boldly re-engineer the driving experience. There will probably be a miniature replica of the car mounted on a joystick; you will twist the little car right to turn the real car right. So intuitive! Of course those of us with many years of experience, expert car drivers, will not be able to apply our experience; and if we are recommending a GNOME car to our friends, they will ask us "why is this different from every other car I have ever seen?"
The really frustrating part is that this is a total replay of what happened with the "object oriented file manager". Originally, the GNOME file manager worked pretty much the way it works now. Then they decided that this is overly complicated for newbies. There should be only one window for any one directory, and that one window should remember where it opened last and open in the same place, to build a sense of persistence and make the file system seem more like a real place. (This is similar to how the original Mac Finder worked, I believe. But the Finder in Mac OS X doesn't work that way anymore, and I believe didn't work that way when the GNOME guys made this decision.)
In true GNOME style, they didn't provide a convenient option to turn this off; why would you want to turn it off? It's better. And that is why I, and so many other people, first learned how to use gconftool, to find that option and turn it off.
The very next release of GNOME they changed the default back to the original behavior, and never changed it again. But for GNOME 3, they are sticking to their guns.
In some ways GNOME 3 is nice, but I bitterly resent the amount of control the GNOME guys are trying to assert over how I use my computer. I'm going to try Linux Mint 12 on a spare computer and see how I like it. From what I have seen, MGSE is a giant step up over either of Unity or GNOME 3 Shell.
One of the core goals of GNOME Shell is to provide the GNOME desktop with a consistent and identifiable visual identity.
Why isn't the core goal "make the user be happy and productive"? How does this "visual identity" thing help me? Why should I cooperate with this?
P.S. GNOME 2.x is my favorite desktop environment ever. The GNOME guys have really squandered all the good will I used to have toward them.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
i have been testing various distros after mint 10 ... just trying to find a worthy upgrade ... but always went back to mint 10 ... it looks good ... is very stable ... and why switch for something worse ... mint 12 aint bad but it still cant match mint 10 .. i hope they dont pull the plug on it in april 2012 .. i dont like the idea of running it without updates ..
Gnome 2 is installed on desktop computers. That's the current user base. The Gnome developers made a mobile phone / tablet OS and call it Gnome 3. That's fine. But why present it like it's a desktop OS when the crappy Gnome 3 bullshit desktop don't work for 99% of the Gnome desktop user base? My opinion is that it would be better if they'd made different "Gnome Desktop" and "Gnome Tablet" versions. I've switched to XFCE and that works for me. Good luck to the Gnome people with their tablet pile of dunkey dung.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
but I don't think, I can let you get distracted, Dave...
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
Does Mint offer KDE as one of its options? Trinity? Or is one stuck w/ Kubuntu?
I just hope clem and his Mint team do as good a job with LMDE. It's been too long since the last update pack and many users are making noises about LMDE being a sleeper distro. I'm not one of them. I would prefer that the developers get it right and focus on stability rather than put out something that is half baked
Excellent points. I just think you're much too kind to your parent. Your parent's idea that there is a cost associated with having "too many" choices does not hold water. First, there can never be "too many" choices. Next, the idea that it fragments developer resources is absurd. The guys working on KDE (or Xfce, or ...) would not be working on Gnome if there was no KDE. They would just not be working on a DE at all. The open source, malleable world is not like the ghetto of Windows or Mac. It is much more rewarding to enthusiasm and individuality. It's not like Microsoft, where they would have to take guys off of Gnome to put them on KDE.
I happen to think the Gnome developers have exactly the wrong set of priorities and exactly the wrong view of usability. But that's less important precisely because there are also KDE, Xfce, and ... - and now because there is MGSE as well. If, on the other hand, I think Microsoft's head is up their ass, I have no recourse whatsoever.
Please support Touch/Motion and tablets in general, but please don't try to unify the Tablet and Desktop UI's. Why not support two completely different presentation modes, a la Metro? (Just do it better and not so much of a bolt on.)
Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I can't get gnome-shell to load in a Virtualbox VM. Got 3D accel enabled, got the 125MB of post-release updates applied, installed the latest Virtualbox guest additions, but if I try to load default Gnome it will load up the fallback mode that's like classic Gnome 2 but not.
MATE loads up OK, but I'm really more interested in the new hybrid interface.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Actually I saw a bus go past a while ago that said it did have WiFi in big letters from stem to stern. For all I know it's the only one in my city but it is a sign of change, hopefully also coming to your part of the world.
The main reason I just installed Debian/testing on my laptop was because the current release of Mint-Debian does not support root-on-lvm-on-crypt which is the setup I use for all of my home machines (since they are essentially single-user). I also found that the Ubuntu based Mint 11 does not support this either. I find this surprising as both of the distros Mint 11 was based on (Debian and Ubuntu) support this feature in their respective installers. I was rather disappointed that it was not available in the Mint 11 installer.
I know "Mint 12" is the Ubuntu based version and that the Debian based Mint 12 is not yet available, but does anybody know if Mint 12 supports this feature? I hope it does because Mint looks like a good fit for my laptop.
Elrond, Duke of URL
"This is the most fun I've had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"-Sam&Max
Oh, and also, is GNUSTEP one of its options? Speaking of which, when is Etoille supposed to be ready, and will it be available on all major distros?
It pains me to say this but out of OSX, Windows and Linux - Win7 has the most usable Desktop Interface. It has decent window management for multiple instances of a program, you can actually minimize windows and the start menu is the least annoying of the lot ( the search is near instantaneous).
KDE is perpetually almost ready. There is always some beyond annoying bug (In my case the window list randomly crashing) or some weird graphical glitch such as icons not showing up for a few seconds. The list of minor bugs goes on and on really...
I know i sound like a troll but i'm really not. I found myself enjoying desktop Linux less and less since GNOME3 and Unity, mere window management is a chore, i think most people are thinking the same way. Win7 is a pretty good, well thought out OS, a Linux user isn't going to get malware on the machine. UAC seems to have done it's job (Overall there are very few show stopping threats).
I constantly hear things like "I made do with xfce/lxde/fvwm" but the simple act of adding an entry to the panel for these environment involves editing a config file or digging through multiple layers of a configuration application. It's just not good enough for 2011, it's not as if i'm running ancient hardware. Using one of these DEs is compromise.
Buying two desktops for 20% of users and one for everyone else would probably cost more than buying laptops for everyone these days.
Maybe, but buying desktops for 80% of the users, and laptops for the other 20% would be the most sensible and cost efficient.
I found the addition of the DuckDuckGo search engine a nice touch. It's really a nice search engine, which is all that google isn't on the privacy front.
What about support from the IT department? It surely is easier to make sure laptops (if they're the same model) work properly and are easier to repair as well.
There are many things to take into account when you are talking about spending money ;)
Anyway, at my company our developers have all laptops as they need to take work home sometimes. On the other hand, the designers have all desktops...
if there where an AMI on the Amazon cloud available. its beyond my imagination why they dont do this. 50% of the people hammering the server in the first few days wont do more than test it for 10 minutes anyway. They could be redirected elegantly to to pay for themself.
Why the efforts to recreate Gnome2? It is part of Gnome 3 and is called Classic.
Yesterday I've installed Ubuntu 11.10. On my laptop I like the new Gnome 3 interface. But on my multimonitor desktop system, the gnome-shell paradigma is not working for me. So I logged out, sellected Gnome 3 classic and fixed a couple of small issues (see Gnome3+Compiz and how to right click on panel in Gnome3 Classic). That was all for me. I'm now working again as I used to do.
Why screwing around with GNOME Shell design when you can improve upon GNOME Panel port to GTK+3? I know it is harder to code in C/GObject than creating JavaScript extensions for GS, but still - it is more viable, and less broken way to do it. It would also be nice if someone would improve Gnome Panel introspection support and therefore allow to use Javascript for it's extensions as for Gnome Shell.
I personally use GNOME Shell (without any customisations) and I love it - after six months with it. What can I say - for each it's own. I'm not surprised that lot of users defend gnome panel idea of it's usefulness and sentimental status (GNOME with GP 2.32 is definitely highest point of G enviroment). But there was strong idication that developers will move on. Yes, I was worried at first too. But then I ran first GNOME 3 betas with Fedora and was hooked (I still dislike Unity quite strongly, but due of several design issues, not because of concept). Of course, no one has invalidiated GNOME 2.32 (or using ported GNOME Panel). Simply now those who want to keep it using should pick up up pieces and try to improve or at least provide security and crash patches. It is not that hard, Code is there. Lot of GNOME devs will definitely help you if you will be serious about that.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
'The Shell is designed in order to minimize distraction and interruption and to enable users to focus on the task at hand. A persistent window list or dock would interfere with this goal, serving as a constant temptation to switch focus.'
Jesus Christ, GNOME! You're not my boss and you're definitely not my wife. So, unless you're willing either to pay me or put out, kindly stop trying to tell me what to do.
When Apple does something with an arrogance similar to them (they didn't) on desktop UI, when you ask them "Who the hell are you?", they can reply "We basically invented consumer desktop environment" and you shut up. Microsoft does have some credits too, they came up with their own way of desktop paradigm.
What are the credentials and references of Gnome 3 designers? Adding some note taking trojan to Debian to trigger Mono install? I may have broken how Debian stable is intended to run since I went nuts when I saw that trojan and completely uninstalled Gnome&depsIt felt like seeing Ballmer's face on my wallpaper when I saw that badly written Mono junk inside Debian. So, sorry if I am flaming a bit.
Really, I do not understand what is the buzz about Unity.
The only thing you may lack there is the classical application menu
but it can be easily switched back on using mainmenu-indicator.
The rest are pure pluses.
The fact that you had to point this out is telling in itself. How is such chording discoverable by the end user?
and costs several times as much.
Until the price war that Amazon has recently started with the Kindle Fire continues, and home users stop buying laptops in favor of tablets. Kindle Fire is already cheaper than a netbook, and some off-brand tablets are even cheaper than that.
The idea that everyone is going to be doing real productive work on a phone with a 3" screen using a bluetooth keyboard is just laughable.
Which is why they'd buy a tablet for their productive work. I just fear a time when laptop and desktop PCs are considered something that only software developers would want to buy, and students, hobbyists, and startups would have a hard time sourcing a laptop or desktop PC.
We obviously need a poll here!
Choices should be straight to the point, no personal preferences of the author should be present.
"I prefer GNOME 3"
"I prefer GNOME 3 with the traditional layout and switching"
"I prefer GNOME 2"
Something like that.
WiFi driver issues are a thing of the past, and hasn't really been an issue for me in the last 5+ years. And now that we do everything in a browser application availability is less of an issue than it ever was. If anything Linux has a MUCH better chance now than it did in 2001. Not that I think Linux will displace Windows on the desktop anytime soon.
A new release will mean tons of tech support calls as customers call in to ask for help with their new ... oh never mind, its linux.
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
I do not like the idea of rewarding failure. Gnome 3 is an utter disaster by a heavy-handed group giving users what they do not want, and should be allowed to fail. Don't paper over Gnome 3's disaster by trying to patch it. Let it fail! Whoever perpetrated Gnome 3 ought to have to come to terms that cramming a user interface down people's throats that they do not want is a bad idea. Gnome 3 is not usable for the people who use Linux on the desktop, professional software developers who need to get their work done. I do not like Gnome 3's inability to have a fixed number of virtual desktops. It destroys the way I've worked for a decade. Gnome 3 must fail, so something like this will never happen again.
By now it's obvious that there are a large number of Linux users (likely even a majority) who want computer desktops to look and act the way desktops are expected to function. Why take decades of design evolution, much of it accomplished by many iterations of trial and error, and just throw it away for something experimental?
What the Mint folks are doing here is the right approach. It's clear that their extensions ought to be rolled into the GNOME mainline, so that every single user has the option to choose between the Shell style desktop and a taskbar style desktop with a single click.
Let's avoid calling it "classic" as well, because that implies it to be quaint and outmoded. It's not. Until recently, the whole world settled on taskbar style desktops because they work really well for a computer with a keyboard and an upright display. Although the self-importanterati of user interface design refuse to admit it, a desktop is not a tablet and it makes no sense to use the same user interface across both of them.
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Clem and the rest of the Linux Mint team are trying to take the badness out of the half baked and brittle GNOME 3, but I think their time would have been better spent polishing another desktop manager, like adding more administrative features to LXDE or more customisation and flexibility to XFCE. Really I'm wondering if the Linux Desktop is being killed, by ivory tower types developing UI in a vacuum who wish users to work their way, taking away user control, releasing by decree without feedback and without regard for real world work flow. There is now opportunity for a distribution to take leadership and make user-centric UI the focus of their refining and integration, but we are losing that in all major distros.
Actually performance on my machine is worse than on Gnome 2. A year ago compiz run on my machine without problems. Now I can only have either classic gnome with no effect, or useless display of xorg driver problems. Without drivers from PPA, I couldn't even see window frames and installation process was a real pain. Desktop search is rubbish compared to gnome-do. There are only 3 themes in MInt 12. Layout engine is only thing that might give hope of future improvements over Gnome 2. If your graphics chip was an Intel Corporation 82865G you would understand why I hate recent changes in Gnome. To me last few months were a giant leap backwards in terms of desktop usability. What was the point to break Gnome for the sake of some stupid bells and whistles. I'm afraid Gnome developers are entering Vista mode. I have tried Gnome 3 on different machines without display problems, and I still think Gnome 3 is a giant leap backwards.
Their rationalizations are just one nonsensical thing after another.
Here's a couple of examples from the link:
The Shell is designed in order to minimise distraction and interuption and to enable users to focus on the task at hand. A persistent window list or dock would interfere with this goal, serving as a constant temptation to switch focus.
So now they're removing things from the interface because they "constantly tempt" us? Following this bizarre logic, they should remove every button on the entire interface because they're all just sitting there, constantly teasing and temping us to click on them, driving us to distraction with their seductive presence. This is nothing but a poorly-thought-out (and pathetically humorous) rationalization for their campaign to incessantly stupidify the interface.
The omission of a window list or dock also reduces the amount of screen space occupied by the Shell, and therefore makes it better suited to devices with smaller screens.
Well, I don't have a smaller screen. What about my needs?
On my Gnome2 desktop, I have a 24x24 pixel button called a "Window Selector" that displays my window list in a drop-down menu when I click it. This button takes up 0.000140625 of my desktop space. So they took a feature away from me (with no option to re-enable it), and the only justification I can find is that I would enjoy one-ten-thousandth more real estate on my desktop.
I have no problem with a Gnome that's configured for smaller screens by default. But why are they systematically stripping out options to improve the experience for users of large monitors? They steadfastly refuse to answer this question directly, and instead, they rationalize their decisions by talking exclusively about tablet users.
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I've never seen this magnitude of high-profile arrogance and blindness in the open-source community. Can somebody explain just what the fuck is going on here? Is this Gnome3 thing just a one-time aberration, or are we going to see more and more of this in the future with other open-source projects?
Katya is my wife. I don't think I'm allowed to upgrade to Lisa.
Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science
On the other hand, only yesterday I pointed out to my wife that Ctrl+Z does undo. She has been using Windows and Word for years, and it never occurred to her that there is a keyboard shortcut for that sort of thing.
At least keyboard shortcuts for Edit menu items are listed in the right column of the Edit menu, as opposed to being buried in a help file that people don't necessarily know exists. A lot of applications for Linux still have nonexistent help files, or help files that are unavailable while not connected to the Internet.
Perhaps a lesson could be that touch interface shuold have an interface designed for that rather than the mouse; Gnome3 for Tablet and Gnome3 for mouse interface.
it certainly can't be claimed from fucking *facebook* fans, as your linked article tries to do. I have many friends and some relatives (yeah, those are converts of mine) that used to use Ubuntu until this year, we're all bailing out into Mint, Arch, Debian, Fedora, OpenSuSE, MacOSX and FreeBSD. ubuntu is toast, yesterday.
Whether Facebook is significant depends on your target audience. It's fine if you want Linux to stay in the geek ghetto, but that's not Ubuntu's goal and you know it. I suppose the access numbers from the Distrowatch homepage and Wikimedia don't fit your agenda, so you just ignore them, but tell me, how does your claim fit the fact that according to Distrowatch popularity numbers, your likely source, Ubuntu has been declining from day 1.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
And puleeeze, converted relatives who turn to Arch and FreeBSD. Yeah right. (Plus I have my own anecdotes of relatives I converted who love Unity, so there. )
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
oh no, those are computer geek friends who went to the Arch and FreeBSD, not the relatives. The relatives like Mint, it's what Ubuntu should have been doing.
OK. I see no problem with geeks finding other systems which fit their needs better. It's always been this way, and Ubuntu is under no illusions in this regard (though I don't really see the reason either, it's not as if Arch or FreeBSD is going to maintain Gnome 2, and practically any other GUI is just as installable on Ubuntu).
As for Mint, are you talking about the new one, 12? That certainly may be a good choice for some users, though compared to Ubuntu's polish it's just plain ugly and they need to pick up considerably in the long run IMHO if they want to stand a chance. Anyway, I'm sure down the line Mint will make some decision which will send the same /. folks into hysteric convulsions like Ubuntu has done now. History repeats itself and there is always a new darling, remember the Ubuntu hype.
This is not what Canonical is about, they are very clear about it, and whether you agree with them or not is obviously your choice. Time will tell, but I don't believe for a second that Mint currently has user numbers in the same order of magnitude as Ubuntu.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
When Shuttleworth decides that he wants the Ubuntu brand to be nothing but Unity, he'll do what he has to in order to make that happen. All the baby buntus exist at his pleasure...just like Ubuntu does. If you don't think he would cut off official support for the other buntu's, remember back a year ago. When he changed the navbar controls to the left, he said it was to make room for important features in upcoming releases. When he kicked Gnome to the curb and forced Unity on the community he said it was because fuck you. If you think these are wild assertions, travel back in time 356 days and publicly announce your prophesy for Ubuntu and Unity. The outrage and shouts of "heretic" and "Charlatan" will drown you out completely. Yet here we are.
Windows assumes you are an idiot...Linux demands proof.
I dunno. I've been using different WMs/DEs since 1995. I think Gnome3 has really struck a balance with usability and intuition.
- First off, it seems like they ripped off OSX with their configuration GUI. I always loved that config. It's missing (some obvious) advanced settings, but hey. I'll file my feture requests/bug reports, be an active part of improving open source software, and I'll watch it get better.
- Gnome3 seems pretty feng shui with window placement, mouse movement for options, etc. Again, it's missing some advanced functionality (keyboard shortcuts, Gnome-DO typing-command function could, in addition to xdg menu entries it could search local path, maybe even detect if something needs to be run in a terminal?)
- The new Nautilus has a LOT to be desired. Right now on Debian Testing, (I mean, I'm excited it's even in Testing, I'm not complaining!) you can't CTRL+V to paste. I'm sure it's just a small oversight, and I'm not about to get my panties in a bunch because of it. Again, I'm going to be an active part of OSS and file my bug reports, maybe go on IRC or a mailing list, and help it get figured out respectably. There's a lot of missing stuff, but it's definitely elegant enough. It looks beautiful, the start of something really big I think.
- I dunno, I just really love the idea of *NOT* having to aim your mouse cursor over a small rectangular label to bring up windows you're working with. One of my favorite things about X in general is that you can ALT+drag windows from any point, not just the titlebar. It's just faster. It feels more natural. Remembering this and building other parts of the UI to reflect it is a very smart choice IMHO. I don't think that idea is popular just because they might want to target tablets/touch screens.
- I can't wait until the notifications are worked out.
- I can't wait until there are more extensions so I can have my weather/system monitor/xeyes back :)
- I can't wait until it works better under LTSP (not fat-clients, just good old traditional remote X). I'm typing this on my thin client downstairs, and it's using XFCE. I really think Gnome3 would look slick on my flat screen.
Take it or leave it. I think it's a good sign that people are bitching about it. Change is difficult, and it shows the motivation to want to help improve and fine-tune it to a long-lasting result. Just don't insult it, that's not respectable to the hard working devs. And you don't have to use it. It *is* your choice, after all.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
First off there is no upgrade path and instead you are forced to do a full reinstall. (slackware 1.0?)
Once I reinstalled on my main desktop where I was quite happy with 11, the gnome-shell kept respawning. (radeon video)
Forcing an upgrade to drivers did not help as images were completely corrupt on restart.
Then on the work laptop where 11 has worked fantastically 12 hangs during the boot.
So, I can't say I'm a big fan of this release.
Seriously guys work out the non-existent upgrade path.
I read the "about" on the MINT site. It stated that was based on Debian and Ubuntu. How much of the latter ?
Is it basically Ubuntu with the multimedia futzing taken care of for you and without Unity?
Would there be a learning curve for Ubuntu users?
If MINT is an Ubuntu derivative, does it get updated as often as Ubuntu?
At its core, Ubuntu is a great OS. It's the interface/DE that's just so frustrating. Gnome 3 and Unity are just going after a paradigm that is incompatible with a traditional workstation experience.
With Xfce, I was convinced by one action alone.
Clicking on notifications makes them instantly disappear, no popup windows, no Windows-style "I must open a menu now even though you're just trying to get me out of the way".
Miles ahead of Gnome in that respect.
The separation of window switching functionality into the overview means that an effective solution to switching is provided when it is desired by the user, but that it is hidden from view when it is not necessary.
I understand what they're trying to get at, but having the task-switching UI remain immediately out of the way makes it a pain in the ass when you actually want to start switching tasks. The decades-old method of simply auto-hiding a window list till your mouse is on it (such as an auto-hiding task bar in Windows) is a far less cumbersome method of hiding the task-switching UI than the approach that gnome-shell has been attempting.
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You know this discussion is going on under a slashdot story covering a new GNOME shell replacement from Linux Mint right?
there are some indications Mint might have new user adoption bigger than Ubuntu now (if distrowatch could be used for anything regarding usage), the Mint 12 UI indeed needs some work but has "classic" mode
Even if true, larger new user adoption is very much not the same as "Mint routed Ubuntu". And, I'm repeating myself, the only thing Distrowatch numbers are good for is to count the number of times Distrowatch visitors looked at a Distrowatch page for a specific distro. Which is not much at all. I mean, I have used Linux on the desktop since 95 or so (1.3.78 was the first kernel I ran), exclusively a year later, and have ever since. Slackware, SuSE, Debian, RedHat, Debian, Gentoo, Debian, Ubuntu. I have not once clicked a Distrowatch link that added to the numbers. Neither have the ca. 10 people I long-term supported in their migrations to Linux distros over the years, most of which have stayed Linux users to this day.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
I have found that Cairo-Dock offers a nice compromise between eye candy and Gnome2-like user-friendliness.
It even has its own session, and accomodates well with Gnome and XFCE.
Definitely a good replacement for Unity or Gnome-Shell.