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Cinnamon Gnome-Shell Fork Releases Version 1.2
New submitter Novin writes with exciting news from the Cinnamon project. Quoting the release announcements: "Cinnamon 1.2 is out! All APIs and the desktop itself are now fully stable! I hope you'll enjoy the many new features, the desktop effect, desktop layouts, the new configuration tool, the applets, changes, bug fixes, and improvements that went into this release. This is a huge step forward for Cinnamon."
The release reintroduces desktop effects, fixes a slew of bugs, and introduces a new applet API (fixing a number of issues intrinsic to shell extensions).
Clem has a fantastic mindset compared to many UI developers today, he knows what most users want, he actually reads user forums and responds with attitude of user experience being important. He'll make GNOME3 a useful base desktop
What are you looking for in a UI? There are many options-- menu-driven (where gnome2 really is fantastic, auto-organizing stuff), KDE (not a big fan, seems powerful), Gnome-3/unity (which i can start to see the appeal of if they can polish it some more), and scores of other DE / WMs.
TBQH, ive always preferred Gnome2 over OSX, but that may be because im more used to Gnome2. OSX always makes me feel lost, and inefficient, and stupid.
Hmm. Did you try using it in a coffee shop?
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Does anyone have a map/categorization type product of the seemingly uncountable UIs?
To the best of my limited knowledge theres a huge correlation in "the UI gets in your face" with CPU/memory/size requirements. There are very few (no?) UIs in the corners of "just gets out of your way but uses huge resources" and "kinda like a 3-d screensaver except its not a screensaver and it uses no resources".
"Usefulness" / "Productivity" seems to correlate with absolutely nothing at all on a global scale, although individuals scream for their own specific favorite.
The continuum of UIs, in order of light to heavy seems to be:
CLI dash and emergency recovery statically linked shells, etc
CLI screen and bash in virtual consoles
CLI emacs in virtual consoles
Ratpoison (I'm toying with RP, it is Very nice)
XFCE (my current desktop of choice)
(I think cinnamon goes in this spot, not entirely sure)
Gnome
KDE
99% of my work (no exaggeration) both at work and home currently is "something small and nearby" with XFCE running a tabbed console/terminal which is SSHed into "something really big and far away" in one virtual window/tab/whatever and another virt window/tab/whatever with firefox + a lot of FF addons/extensions, although I've used everything in the list above at some time in the past 18 or 19 years of linux. Yeah that emacs era was a little awkward...
Did I put cinnamon in the right spot in my little 1-d graph? I'm curious if its actually lighter than XFCE.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Disclaimer: yes, I'm using GNOME 3 with GNOME Shell as devs intended to and I have some ironic laughts about claims that "GS/Unity devs are screwballs and don't know nothing". However, everyone uses tools best for him, so...just use it, don't go around claiming that it's best desktop for now.
However, I have purerly technical question - why not improving GNOME 3 Panel? It's ported, code cleaned up, it's introspectable (you can write JS extentions like for GNOME Shell) and you can still keep all the goodies, including having compiz and friends.
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This is one of those wonderful headline that will read as utterly bizzare nonsense to most of the world.
One advantage of Linux is you have full access to any turd you wish to polish, versus being stuck with someone else's fecal offerings!
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I've been watching this with interest since it was announced and found myself bitterly disappointed to see that in every screenshot I could find the Cinnamon fork used a variant of the MintMenu. No offense to those who like it, it simply doesn't trip my trigger and I prefer the Gnome 2 menu bar. Is this possible using Cinnamon or do those of us who prefer the old way have to wait for MATE to finish being ported to get "our" desktops back?
Clem, if you're watching these comments, I gotta say that despite vehemently disagreeing with your politics I really appreciate the care you're showing the users of your distro and your willingness to create something that not only works well, but looks good too! Thank you.
--bornagainpenguin
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My critical path doesn't usually include desktop pro's and con's; my enthusiasm for such questions was exhausted by the great vi vs. emacs crusades in the days of yore.
The recent Canonical debacle with Unity has shaken me out of my complacency. In the early days of desktop linux I flirted with both KDE and Gnome before standardizing on Gnome because it felt easier and I wanted to devote my thought energy to other matters (no disrespect, KDE, it's just how I went on a whim way back then).
And so I stayed for about 12 years. But when I upgraded to oneiric this fall and was slapped in the face by the perversion of nature that is Unity, I tried to revert to Gnome only to find it had atrophied and bloated to near Windows-suck levels. So I started shopping around. Sure, I flirted with the idea of CLI-only, but GUIs do occasionally have value. Then I switched to xfce and haven't looked back. It feels like I got a hardware upgrade.
Some of my peripheral applets are gone, but next to the general performance gain it's a price worth paying.
Once again, my faith in the utter superiority of OSS has been confirmed. In Windoze or Applez land you dance to their tune or else. In Linux, you can be continually born again. Speciation is good.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.