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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."
Security updates and support. I'm not the biggest fan of GNOME 3 or Unity but what Mint is doing isn't bad. Ubuntu had driven me away to OpenSUSE powered by KDE, but I found that I didn't like a lot of the KDE apps. Mint has made GNOME 3 more usable for me, and has really simplified some of the configuration and setup that was a pain in OpenSUSE. I run it on a MacBook Pro for compiling / cross-compiling programs and unlike OpenSUSE, everything just worked right out of the box. So far I am very pleased with it.
To the general public? No, I doubt desktop Linux matters much at all. For those of us that prefer to use a free, open, secure, stable and efficient OS though, it matters quite a bit.
'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.
Well, there's probably more people using Linux on the desktop now than there were people using computers 20 years ago. 1-2 percent is a LOT of people (millions). If I publish a piece of software and millions of people use it, I'd say it is successful. Who cares about what percentage of the entire market it is. In absolute terms, there is an assload of desktop users.
And the 'performance' of having to move the mouse all over the screen, switch to a different overlay display, move the mouse all over the screen to click on an icon or take your hand off the mouse to type in the name of the application you start is not an improvement over Gnome 2.
Compiling a full Gnome 2 desktop from source is an exercise in masochism.
performance
Untrue. Most people know better. Try GNOME 3 on a netbook (for example) after using GNOME 2.
I'm not insinuating that the performance is unusable. But to say it performs faster is just sheer misinformation or inexperience. It's noticeably slower and clunky. You'd expect it to be though, because it's doing sophisticated animations, etc. If your video drivers aren't up to the task (which is probably likely, given the fragile state of Linux graphics), you're going to feel it.
The more important issue right now is that it's fairly unstable and buggy. Maybe the GNOME software itself is the cause, or maybe it's the video drivers. I can't really go 10 minutes without minor (yet persistent) rendering issues, and can't go an hour without the shell completely freezing and requiring a restart. (Get used to hitting Alt+F2, typing "r", and hitting Enter.) I'm using GNOME 3.2 by the way.
There's no real benefit to using GNOME 3 yet. The new paradigm they're going for isn't as bad as people say it is, but it isn't a clear-cut improvement over the ways of old either. Some things are better, some are worse. Combine that with the fairly disrespectful way that GNOME 3 was rolled out, and it isn't hard to see where all the disdain comes from. Linux Mint is the only distro I see respecting its users, particularly by creating a path for transitioning via extensions and offering MATE.
GNOME will be in a better position a year from now, I imagine. GNOME 3 will mature, they'll get to implement more of their ideas, and there will surely be a ton of extensions and themes. (This all assumes that video drivers will improve too. If they don't, GNOME 3 will simply never be pleasant to use.)
> 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