Fedora Adds MATE and Cinnamon Desktops to Main Repository, Releases Beta

Already available in third party repositories, the GNOME 2 fork MATE and GNOME 3 fork Cinnamon will now be included in Fedora 18. From the H: "After almost two months' delay, the Fedora Project has released the first and final beta of Fedora 18. The distribution, which is code-named 'Spherical Cow,' includes the MATE desktop – a continuation of the classic GNOME 2 interface – in its repositories for the first time. Fedora 18's default edition uses GNOME 3.6.2 as its interface and a separate KDE Spin provides the KDE Software Collection 4.9.3; Xfce 4.10 and version 1.6.7 of Linux Mint's Cinnamon are also available from the distribution's repositories."

Comments

Will MATE make it into RHEL?

[kthreadd]

Since RedHat uses Fedora as a base when they build their enterprise distribution, is there any chance that MATE will now get there? We're using RHEL 5 and 6 on some desktops, running really good crafted versions of GNOME 2. And I'm not looking forward to the day RHEL 7 comes out with what I assume will be GNOME 3. I like some of the things they are doing, and one day it will probably be as good as GNOME 2; but that day is not now. Getting MATE included into RHEL would certainly be a good thing.

Re:Will MATE make it into RHEL?

[fnj]

I would guess that it is practically a given. RHEL7 is supposedly going to be forked from F18.

Re:Will MATE make it into RHEL?

[trollebolle]

I would guess that it is practically a given. RHEL7 is supposedly going to be forked from F18.

I would guess not. Though RHEL7 will be based on F18 or thereabouts, RHEL only includes a subset of the packages that exist in Fedora. Remember that Red Hat will be supporting the packages for 10 years. They'll choose the package subset with care. But on the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised to see MATE in EPEL7.

Re:Will MATE make it into RHEL?

[fnj]

Yes, that could well be the case too, since they don't include Xfce as it is. Of course the savvy user knows that he just needs to enable the EPEL repo to get Xfce.

No love for MS...

[duplicitious]

What, no Metro interface?

Choice is GOOD

[Anonymous Coward]

No doubt this will prompt the weenies to suggest (for the two thousandth time) that everyone who freely chose to work on these individual projects should drop everything, "join forces", and devote their precious time and effort to one unified project. What these people somehow missed -- even though it is blindingly obvious -- is that each of those developers freely chose to work on their project -- based on their own personal goals, not yours. And the reason why all of these projects are individually successful is precisely because those developers want to be working there. They freely choose to be there because they each personally want to be there. Trying to force them to abandon their self-chosen projects cannot possibly result in the same devotion and quality that personal choice has produced.

Why bother, XFCE is all you need

[digitect]

After struggling to use Gnome 3 since Fedora officially released it, I recently tried XFCE again and was blown away with how fast and suitable it is. The defaults are good and there are tons of options to customize it back to the similar paradigm Gnome 2 was. I couldn't believe how much faster my machine felt after switching. Even moving Firefox tabs was better!

I gave G3 PLENTY of time and never could feel comfortable with it even after slowly adding extension after extension to get something workable. The visual component of a desktop is important, and the G3 simply hides too much that is necessary to use it. It's like having a car with no dashboard. The so-called "easy"methods to reveal open windows and find applications are hard to discover, require too much input and memory, and are too slow.

After this weekend's pleasurable re-discovery of the improved XFCE, I'm never going back. Gnome doesn't matter any more to me.

Re:Why bother, XFCE is all you need

[Minwee]

TWM, on the other hand, runs as fast as ever and has no need for useless cruft.

All you kids with your Gee-nomes and Kiddums and Ex-feeces can just get off my lawn.

Re:Why bother, XFCE is all you need

[jones_supa]

I also feel that XFCE is possibly the best desktop for Linux right now. Also relatively bug-free.

Re:Why bother, XFCE is all you need

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been plugging this for a while. Fedora+XFCE the most usable and stable linux desktop I've ever used. (The XFCE "spin" comes with XFCE installed/default)
XFCE is clean and simple and consistent. It's lightweight but functional. It's visually pleasant and not gaudy. It's familiar yet well suited for it's job. (Lets face it, after nearly decade of being the most popular OS in the world, XP's UI is pretty much the standard by which all others are based)

I've also grown to appreciate Fedora in general. It's stable and well supported and quite functional. It's also easy to use. I feel it's grown and surpassed the debian based distros for most uses. It's also widely supported in the commercial sector. (Yeah it is. Everyone knows you don't shell out for redhat for /everything/)

Debian is.. Debian. It's good for geeks in a way, but I think too many of it's design philosophies get in the way of making a good end user product. OS's are a commodity. VMs make system instances a commodity. Nobody has time to dick around with an OS to make it work. Even the geeks. Debian stable has packages that are frankly too old. Debian unstable is wonky and undocumented.

Ubuntu has just gone to lala land. It has all of the problems of Debian, and a UI that nobody likes.

Mint is Unbuntu, but even more poorly supported.

The other distros just don't have enough users to form a good support community.

openSUSE

[Anonymous Coward]

Fedora is late, as usual, due to its lack of manpower. Compare with the amount of desktop environments supported in openSUSE:

* Afterstep http://software.opensuse.org/package/afterstep
* cinnamon http://software.opensuse.org/package/cinnamon
* GNOME 2 and 3: http://en.opensuse.org/GNOME_repositories
* KDE 3 and 4: http://en.opensuse.org/KDE_repositories http://en.opensuse.org/KDE3
* LXDE http://en.opensuse.org/LXDE_repositories
* MATE http://en.opensuse.org/MATE
* Qt Desktop http://software.opensuse.org/package/razorqt
* sugar http://software.opensuse.org/package/sugar
* xfce http://software.opensuse.org/package/patterns-openSUSE-xfce

Lots of window managers, too: http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/X11:/windowmanagers/openSUSE_12.2

Re:openSUSE

[AdamWill]

Fedora has cinnamon, LXDE, Xfce and Sugar (Fedora is the basis of the official Sugar Labs builds, actually), and a bunch of others. MATE just happens to be getting some press at the moment.

Re:openSUSE

[Anonymous Coward]

Fedora has Cinnamon and Sugar? Big Deal!

Microsoft has High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Re:openSUSE

[Minwee]

That all you got?

Yes, I know. MATE and Cinnamon aren't in the official repositories yet, but that's only a matter of getting a bigger hammer.

To be fair, there is a big difference between having a desktop environment and window manager which run on a system and having all of its features fully integrated and supported. I can quite happily run FVWM on my desktop, but things start getting awkward when I run an application which expects to find a dock or notification area from Gnome.

Re:Now if only they would fix the systemd bloat

[Minwee]

As it is unreliable, buggy, and just plain wrong.

Indeed. If something is going to be wrong, I prefer that it have sprinkles on top. Plain wrong is just boring.

Hi Linus!

[Mister Liberty]

So troll me.

KDE and Razor QT

[Seeteufel]

KDE and Razor Qt are the future. Gnome was nice but not anymore. Dolphin is so much better than what Nautilus has to offer. I would say, simply port KDE to LLVM and we'll get a bulletproof desktop system.

Re:I love cinnamon but only in food

[iggymanz]

blah blah blah I made a mistake and I'm blaming cinnamon blah blah blah