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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?
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.
It does, but perhaps not for the reasons everyone imagines. Linux is great for breathing new life into older systems. For casual users, it can also be quite useful as long as it's set up correctly. Power users are power users; they'll figure out stuff.
Is it ready for the masses? I still don't think so.
"I still have to ask the general public whether, desktop Linux still matters. Does it?"
The general public has no clue linux actually exists. But there remain a part of the population (0.1%) that never use anything else than linux. I do not recall when was the last time I used a windows machine for more than an hour. I think it was somewhere in 2006.
Most likely that part of the population read slashdot :)
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!"
Well, the desktop in general, Windows included, is rapidly becoming inconsequential other than for business use. The non-business computer market is rapidly moving to smartphones, tablets and laptops - all smaller screen devices where a traditional screen-real-estate-hungry user interface isn't the best option. This is the market that Ubuntu is obviously targeting with Unity, and Android and Windows also appear to be moving in the same direction - Windows 8 and Ice Cream Sandwich UIs both are geared towards small-screen appliance-type use.
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, and for that use Linux always has been a great option, and only getting better with age, even if the path it's taking is a little uncertain. RIP Ubuntu. Long live Linux Mint!
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.
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.
The general public has no clue linux actually exists.
Whoa, hold on there! I'm sure if they own an Android or webOS device, they'll have heard of Linux at some point, no matter how small the reference may be.
LXDE is amazing as well. It's really light and efficient. It's my personal favorite out of all the traditional-look-and-feel desktop environments.
I still have to ask the general public whether, desktop Linux still matters. Does it?
Honestly? The only reason for a "visible" operating system is local storage, mostly of photos, and "edge case" applications that have not yet been implemented as web apps. As for which is best ... Windows can die in a fire, OS X is bouncy happy joyful brain-dead moonbeam cultware, and both Unity and Gnome 3 are headed straight for hell.
I want operating systems to just leave me alone. Stop annoying me. Stop moving my stuff without my permission. Stop demanding that I upgrade and reboot. Stop messing with the menu that I customized just because some designer says so. Stop breaking things that work, Ubuntu. LEAVE ME ALONE.
I spend almost all my time in a Web browser -- specifically, Chrome. Pretty much everything I do daily is already better on the Web.
I should be running ChromeOS. I can't bring myself to switch to a Chromebook, but not for rational reasons. 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. You know what I do when I get in an airplane? I put in my headphones and close my eyes.
This is quite an interesting phenomenon to me. It seems like with the whole "cloud" business, we're going back to a client-server computing approach; the servers and clients are just a shit-ton more powerful than anything 20-30 years ago.
Don't worry, ten years from now everyone will remember that the thin-client model sucks and we'll be back to building powerful local systems again.
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.
web 2.0 can suck it until these snake oil 'cloud' asps and coders can ensure access and legal protections for users that prevent abuse. computers are great because they're empowering, but if the new model is to make me dependent on a hierarchy of trolls guarding various bridges, I'll abandon it as quickly as I took to it. if i'm to depend on a tool for livelihood, then I want it stored and executed locally.
A Fedora final release is a RHEL public beta, no more, and no less.
it's hard to see what would make people want to go back to clunky difficult to maintain desk-bound computers.
That's what they said about X terminals.
Sure, if all you do is look at web pages then a desktop is overkill. But as soon as you want to write a resume, you're fscked if all you have is a phone or a tablet.
> 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
I can't comment on Fedora, having not used it seriously for a few years now, but from my own personal experience of using various Linux distros over many years, it beats Windows hands down in terms of stability. But then, that's pretty anecdotal as I'm just going by personal experience. Maybe I've just been very lucky and you've been unlucky?
As for efficiency, maybe I should have worded that differently as I actually meant in terms of my work flow. This is going to be different for everyone but for what I do on a PC, GNU Linux allows me to get more done in less time. Having said that, on the same hardware (dual boot), general file and network operations amongst other things are definitely quicker than my Windows install.
I'm really not trying to do a 'my OS is better than your OS' although it probably does come across as that. The point I was originally trying to make is that different people have different requirements and preferences and we choose different tools for the job based on them. I really can't imagine myself being as productive using Windows than I am in Linux but I know many people who would have exactly the opposite experience.
Choice is good.
But as soon as you want to write a resume, you're fscked if all you have is a phone or a tablet.
The "consumer" solution for this is not a full computer but a Bluetooth keyboard for one's existing phone or tablet.
Are you using the LTS releases? I havn't used the 6-month releeases in ages (due to the number of bugs) but I've been using the current ubuntu LTS for months now and havn't really had a problem with bugs at all.
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 ..
This is something profound that deserves mention - on an early skit [ pre-skipped for your pleasure, so pay attention ] Dave Chappelle mentions Linux. This is profound, because that skit was shown on one of the most popular shows back then, in 2003!
And the sad part was, the reference flew right over everybody's heads.
Actually, it isn't. The only time I've ever seen tablets in the wild (very rare) have always been stand-alone. The most often case for people using their devices (at least in public) have been:
1. Laptop toting coffee shop junkies, almost 99% laptop based, and 50-60% lean back in posture (AKA, not real work)
( Once ever have I seen a tablet at a coffee shop, and it was a guy flashing up some pictures for sales/marketing it seemed. )
2. Cell Phones (all), for the ones that have user interfaces, I've recently seen a large number of people texting one another (IMHO not likely business), ~10% playing games?, and maybe 10% surfing for pages in some degree
3. E-paper devices - 99.999999% lean back
Of all examples cited, most people doing any sort of real work were the laptop toting junkies. Unless we move very far into the utopia of nobody needing to do real work, your argument seems flawed. The fact is that REAL work cannot and frankly is not done on the go.
Laptop rant: Our office has a policy of using laptops instead of desktops (who knows why?) and probably 20% of the coworkers that have and use laptops tote the beast between work and home (the rest don't even bother taking them home) and even then, the benefit of having a device on the go becomes pretty much irrelevant since its only used in fixed locations that could've been using cheaper equipment to begin with. Outside of the rugged road warriors who'll always be working from planes, trains, and automobiles, who needs portables (for work)?
Bye!
I've been running Ubuntu for a while and am starting to get tired of it, so I will express my opinion here in a rant that doesn't have much to do with the original post, except to exploit it for humor.
Free as in beer: True, but not much of a point if you have a job that pays at least minimum wage. I think I'd rather install Windows and have it work than try to figure out which of hundreds of distros and versions to use and getting one of them to actually work right on my system.
As in speech: Don't care. I'm a software engineer and I have better things to do when I get home than set up build environments and compile my major apps and OS components, much less actually try to understand the code and make changes to it.
Open: Also don't care, same reason.
Secure: Eh, not so much. Windows seems to be perfectly secure if you don't do stupid stuff like use IE (especially IE6), download every toolbar, screensaver, and smiley set known to man, and run attachments from random emails. And if you're doing that, you'll find some way to get your Linux install hacked too.
Stable and efficient: I'll believe that when somebody tells me why no kernel later than -33 will boot my system, file transfers mysteriously slow down to painful speeds, getting graphics to work right is pretty much a shot in the dark, getting multiple hard drives to work right is a ridiculous pain in the ass, audio mysteriously stutters at random, etc. Compared to all this, my Windows computers are easy.
I don't reply to ACs
This is perhaps ripe for a sociology study. We have let loose control of our money (our very livelihood which is now mostly out of our control, accessible by any agency the banks are beholden to), we trust computer system data more than paper documents, and now people are letting their data migrate out of their hands effectively losing control of it just like their money. For the most part nothing "goes wrong" until it does, but then you are on your own and most people don't care that it happened to you really. It won't be long before an injunction or simply a government action (mistake or not) could make your business and money disappear in an instant until you comply with their demands (tax issues, violations). I don't mind losing a bit of control if it benefits the community (socialism?) but this isn't really benefiting me or the community and resolves all my power to the state. This really is a social issue, and if it is planned this way the people who are planning this are damn good at manipulation.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
And don't forget how much bigger an assload is today than 20 years ago.
Windows is much more stable baked and less buggy than Linux on a desktop. It is very sad but true due to alpha quality software. Windows stopped blue screening when XP came out and got rid of dos underneath that kept conflicting with win32 code. Windows 7 can stay up for years without a reboot now.
http://saveie6.com/
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
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
The fact that you had to point this out is telling in itself. How is such chording discoverable by the end user?
Hehehehe, I've had the exact opposite experience.
Laptops are a bitch to repair.
Yes, even with Dell business support.
Huh? I've been using Xfce for a month now, and adding panel entries is easy. Just right click on the panel, then select Panel / Add New Items. The first option in the pop-up list is a program launcher. Once you put the program launcher on the panel, right click on the launcher and select the executable you want the launcher to launch. Or you can specify a custom command line. Not quite as convenient as dragging something from the start menu, but not a huge hassle. I'm using Xubuntu, and the only serious usability difficulty I faced on installation was getting network file browsing to work; some googling provided the solution of removing the Thunar file manager and installing Nautilus with the "--no-desktop" option.
Free as in beer: True, but not much of a point if you have a job that pays at least minimum wage. I think I'd rather install Windows and have it work than try to figure out which of hundreds of distros and versions to use and getting one of them to actually work right on my system.
Eh? Well, at minimum wage, coming up with $300 (one week's pay before taxes) to buy a new copy of Win7 will be quite a struggle, but I get that you are exaggerating for effect. Anyway, there are really only 3 major players in the desktop Linux space: Fedora, Mint, and Ubuntu. Although since you say you are running Ubuntu, I think you already know that. I haven't used Fedora for many years because every time I do there are serious bugs and stability issues. I just don't have the patience or time to deal with it, so I've been using Ubuntu and have more or less been happy.
I don't use it because it's free. I'm past needing free as in beer software now. I use plenty of commercial software on my Linux box. I use it because it works well for me. As much as OS X is nice and flashy, and Windows has improved drastically over the years, they both still constantly frustrate me. The free as in speech/open, I do care about, but only in so much as it affects the seamless functioning of the system. I want open source drivers because they can be integrated well to work with the kernel, and kernel devs can patch and update them. I want open source libraries so that useful utilities that I use all the time can be written by college students without worrying about licensing. I want open codecs so that I don't have to worry about video and sound playback on my machine, and I don't have to use crappy commercial dvd software to watch movies. I want applications that use open formats to handle my data so that I don't have to worry about proprietary formats holding it hostage.
And finally, I don't want to be on an endless upgrade churn constantly buying new software versions for incremental improvements that still keep crappy legacy code around because the companies behind them don't want to invest the time and money to properly rewrite them to support the newer toolkits and technologies. Endnote X5 still uses the widget toolkit from Windows 2000 and doesn't properly support installing the toolbar for multiple users. And to get support for newer versions of Word and Windows, yep, gotta buy a new version. Filemaker Pro occasionally has bugs that don't mix well with OS X updates, mostly because they are still using unsupported and deprecated functions. When a problem comes up, do they issue a patch? Nope, gotta buy the new version. Photoshop only just recently, after many years and many versions on OS X, finally removed their last Carbon dependencies in the latest version. It's a >$1000 program! Why can't they properly update sooner? I really hate this about a lot (not all) of commercial software, and it doesn't seem to be a problem with open source software.
Stable and efficient: I'll believe that when somebody tells me why no kernel later than -33 will boot my system
No idea. But a very unusual problem. What kind of hardware setup and what version of Ubuntu do you have?
Katya is my wife. I don't think I'm allowed to upgrade to Lisa.
Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science
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.