Slashdot Mirror
GNOME2 Fork MATE Desktop 1.6 Released
An anonymous reader writes "Excerpts from the announcement: 'This release is a giant step forward from the 1.4 release. In this release, we have replaced many deprecated packages and libraries with new technologies available in GLib. We have also added a lot of new features (...) MATE 1.6 is the result of 8 months of intense development and contains 1800 contributions by 39 people, and more than 150 translators.' See the release notes for a list of changes and new features."
They've unforked a number of old GNOME 2 libraries, relying instead of technology from GLib/Gtk+ 3 and other projects where it makes sense. None of the new features really stand out on their own, but it looks like there are dozens of small improvements that should make the desktop experience more pleasant.
'nuff said
GNOME 3 is probably going to be great one day, but the problem is that some of us has to deploy new systems now. If you install Debian 7.0 you will get GNOME 3.4, if you install Ubuntu 12.04 you will get GNOME 3.2 and so on. It doesn't matter that GNOME 3.10 will be great, when the version we get is ready as a replacement for GNOME 2. This is a serious problem for organizations which have been able to deploy Linux desktops in large part due to the effort of the GNOME community, and especially GNOME 2. Until GNOME 3 is ready for mass adoption we have to offer GNOME 2 as well. There's many ways to do that, but none of them are great.
Pointless according to whom? To you? Well, that's all fine and dandy that you like Gnome 3, but many of us wouldn't touch it with a barge pole. MATE is very much welcome to a sizeable portion of the Gnome userbase.
as a mate desktop user i an glade to see progress, I do think though that they made a mistake early on forking most every gnome project when simply forking the desktop, panel, file browser and maybe window manager would of be enough. I mean why did they feel the need to fork the solitaire game when the problem was the desktop? but hopefully we will see the whole environment move on to gtk3 soon and then much of the redundancies between the Mate Gnome and Cinnamon projects could be merged and leave use with several desktop options but one set of utilities and application
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Gnome3 with some tweaks really isn't a replacement for Gnome2. Until that changes (assuming that it ever does), there will always be a point to a separate fork of Gnome2.
Although the fork never should have been necessary to begin with.
I should have been able to happily use Gnome2 and Gnome3 side by side. Upgrading my distribution to the current version should never have required that my old desktop be completely trashed.
YOU don't get to dictate what the rest of us can use.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
GNOME 3 is probably going to be great one day
Microsoft says the same about Metro. And for both, it's hard to find a fitting comment without making sailors blush.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
...that's fine so long as I am running a tablet.
Unfortunately, I haven't quite yet bought into all of this "death of the PC" rhetoric and I still need something that's useful on the kit that I still have.
Of course you will get resistance when you try to force an inappropriate interface on someone. A lot of people aren't actually sheep. This is especially true of Unix users.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
What difference does it make? I use KDE (this week), and all my GTK programs still run fine. There are no compatibility issues to worry about.
You used the word "deploy", which makes it seem like you're concerned with having many systems with identical desktop configurations. In that case, just install the one you prefer to manage. There are many to choose from, including mate ('sudo apt-get install mate').
sig: sauer
From what I'm seeing here the real improvement is that they've cleaned up the older GNOME code and moved deprecated stuff over to glib/gtk+. From a user standpoint it may be insignifcant, but from the maintenance perspective it's probably fantastic.
"1800 contributions by 39 people, and more than 150 translators"
If Mate had started now you may have point, but it was created while Gnome 3 was still in the absolutely clusterf*ck state right after its release. At that point it was unusable and had no extensions. Even after they added support for extensions they would break all of them with each update. While it is slightly better now those improvement wouldn't of happened if they had no felt the pressure created by people leaving for forks like Cinnamon and Mate.
Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliant as it is damning with light praise.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
That's what eventually sent me to KDE. I was tolerating Gnome-shell and even liking some features. It was the developer's attitudes toward theming and extensions that made me realize that in the long run, we wanted different things. The good side is that I probably never would've givven KDE a fair shot otherwise though. I'm now a big fan. You can configure everything, and the defaults are generally well chosen.
Except that GNOME3 doesn't support the basic desktop configurations that GNOME2 does like multi-head-separate-screen. GNOME3 fails to even start on such a configuration.
For what it's worth, I do like the Program Manager interface. I like that it's absolutely simple, and does only a single thing at a time. 99% of the time, that's a bad thing, but once in a while it's perfect, such as for an interface for one-off appliances. When the machine boots, Program Manager only offers icons for the applications necessary for the appliance. While other applications may still exist on the system, they can be kept hidden from the more dangerous users.
No, you can't use the bookkeeping system to watch Youtube.
No, you can't check your email from the audio console.
No, the industrial control system won't let you launch that hilarious prank program you brought in on your USB flash drive.
These days I use Xfce for such consoles, but it takes a significant amount of tweaking to get it locked-down enough. If anyone has better suggestions for a secure-against-user-stupidity system, I'm open to them.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
MATE is probably one of the best examples of how one owns a piece of open source software more then any proprietary software you would typically pay for. The Gnome team decided to take a radical direction in Gnome 3 development. As a user the MATE developers basically said "Thanks for your hard work but I don't really want Gnome 3". And that was that. Anyone using MATE still "own" all the time and effort put into Gnome 2. No one can ever take that away.
Compare this to Windows 8 metro. Many people prefer the windows 7 desktop. One could argue that Windows can't take away their license to Windows 7 in a similar fashion to how Gnome team can't take away peoples copy of Gnome 2. Even ignoring the fact that I bet Windows could take away your copy of Windows 7 if they wanted, software as a standalone package needs to be updated to work with other software. In the physical world at least one could use adapters and such to keep a product useful. This is not available with closed source software and eventually people will have to abandon Windows 7.
These days I use Xfce for such consoles, but it takes a significant amount of tweaking to get it locked-down enough. If anyone has better suggestions for a secure-against-user-stupidity system, I'm open to them.
Don't actually launch a desktop environment at all. Just launch the program directly in an infinite loop as an xsession (or whatever it's called). If the user exits The One And Only Program, it relaunches immediately.
GNOME 3 still has issues. Don't have a supported graphics card? Want to get a useful error message other then "Something crashed, now you must log out?" Want to have a system tray? Nope, not in GNOME 3.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
I'm still irritated that Debian didn't put Mate in the wheezy repos. Right now a squeeze->wheezy update will go from Gnome 2 to Gnome 3 when the ability for it to go Gnome2->Mate with Gnome3 as a separate option could have been right there.
(fwiw, I use Gnome 3 on my HTPC and Gnome2/Mate on my development machine; they both fill different niches).
... the basic desktop configurations that GNOME2 does like multi-head-separate-screen.
Ca you please provide a link that describes this feature ?
Which feature? Multiple discrete screens? This is really just the good-old multiple head mode of X11 without any "screen merging/joining" features such as Xinerama or GPU merging like Nvidia twinview.
You know you have this multiple screen operating mode if you have more than one screen and your first screen is :0.0 and your second one is :0.1 and your third one is :0.2, etc. You likely also cannot drag windows from one screen to the other. But what you can do is have multiple workspaces on each screen that operate independently. That is you can leave the active workspace on your first screen on the first workspace while switching the workspace on your other screen(s) to their workspace 2, etc.
It is this mode of being able to switch the displayed workspace on one monitor while leaving the workspace on the other where it is that you will only be able to take away from me if you can get it out of my dead, cold fingers.
Still has issues! Still has issues? Master of the understatement. GNOME 3 is garbage to the core, hatched from diseased minds. Other than that, it's fine.
I've tried that, but then I'm missing window decorations and the other niceties X expects a bona-fide window manager to provide.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Being better than OSX and Win8 is hardly much to brag about. Personally, I agree that it's pointless - because Gnome went off the rails at version 2, and if I was going to fork it I would go back to a 1.x series. But so what? Enough people found this useful to do it. So it's not pointless for them, and they have no obligation to care what you or I think of it.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Use a minimal window manager like DWM.
Ubuntu 12.04 also offers Gnome 3.4. I've been happy enough with it as my desktop (with 6 or 7 very necessary extensions) but it is lacking a lot of the polish that has come in the following releases. Ubuntu used to package the latest Gnome with each release but now they are a cycle behind, so even upgrading to 13.04 next month will not get you 3.8, which is too bad because it seems to be finally cohering into a good DE again.
I can't find a single review that claims what you said, and all the screenshots make it look pretty shitty.
Don't confuse GNOME3 with GNOME Shell..
Some of use find KDE barely more palatable than GNOME Shell or Unity.
If you install Gnome3 you get Gnome Shell. Gnome Shell is the Gnome experience.
What difference does it make? I use Windows since KDE4 and all my GTK programs run fine.
Well, FWIW, I still prefer Gnome2 to KDE4, but, to be fair, I also preferred KDE3 to Gnome2.
Currently I'm using KDE4, but if MATE has gotten past it's teething problems (it was very slow the last time I installed it, but that's nearly a year ago now), I may switch to it. That would mean, however, downloading a live CD to test, so I may give it some more time.
OTOH, my suspicion is that ElectricSheep still won't work on MATE, and that is one of my wife's requriements for my computer.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Not only that, but the word from on high seemed to be "suck it". I wonder if any concessions to usability would have been made at all if the forks hadn't happened.
Gnome is cool .. no doubt . But All I really need is xterm :) ;)
------------
--- brotherhood of command line users ----
If you're really a command line user, you don't need X and xterm.
... but I have jumped to KDE like so many others.
Right there with you. I ))HATE(( KIO for samba and end up just using mount.cifs for anything serious.
sig: sauer
Exactly.
And 'death of the PC' -- wouldn't that in its wake ... smartphone,
automatiaslly bring about the death of
tablet, embedded, you name it??
After all ... let me rephrase that -- does anybody know .... tablet!!??
of anyone doing coding, software development, app-
writing, whatever you want to call it, doing coding on
a
Now I got used to it and moved on, ....
Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliant as it is damning with light praise.
You have a typo. You put "compliant" where you meant "compliment". If you are going to use this as your signature you might want to fix the typo in your signature.
By the way, I agree.
This fork is pointless, why fork gnome 2 when you can install a tilling wm?
...then how can all you brave non-sheep be expected to.
Tech Journalists are the lowest form of techie. More like wannabe groupies than actual techies.
Win8, OSX and Gnome Shell actually have marketshare. What else should I compare it to?
Mate 1.6 is probably going to be great one day, but the problem is that some of us has to deploy new systems now. If you install Debian 7.0 you won't get any version of Mate, if you install Fedora you will get Mate 1.5.8 and so on. It doesn't matter [...]
...And what is so insightful about noting that I might have a point if Mate had started now. I predict that 3 years, not only will you be using Gnome Shell, but so will Ubuntu once it realizes that Unity is a blindingly obvious dead end that no one else will bother to adopt. Gnome shell will be as dominant among distros as Gnome 2 was.
Are but would that comment make a fishwife blush?
(A fishwife is the wife of a fisherman. Cast your mind back a hundred years or so: the fishing fleet arrives back at 2 am, there is no radio, the motive power was sail, it is cold windy & raining, there are no freezers, no electricity, the menfolk simply want to safe the boats and flake to bed, their women folk have to climb out of bed and gut the fish ready for the market with very sharp knives. Now what kind of language are these 'gentle ladies' likely to be using? I bet these fishwives would make most sailors blush or go white with fright...)
If you're really a command line user, you don't need X and xterm.
You need X to open many xterms and have many command lines :)
It is this mode of being able to switch the displayed workspace on one monitor while leaving the workspace on the other where it is that you will only be able to take away from me if you can get it out of my dead, cold fingers.
Amen to that. Luckily xfce supports this feature very well.
I'm still irritated that Debian didn't put Mate in the wheezy repos.
Yeah man I agree. When I Google searched the mailing lists, the consensus from the Debian guys was that MATE was a pointless fork.
Debian still builds binaries for the 68000 processor architecture, so they should know from pointless!
Since MATE is being packaged up for Ubuntu and other Debian-ish distros, it should be doable to put those packages into Debian. I really don't know why that would be a problem at all. I thought Debian was proud of the huge number of packages they offer... they might not want to put the MATE packages on the installer CD, but it ought to be available from apt-get.
Maybe the Debian guys are drinking the Gnome 3 kool-aid? "You get no alternative because We Say So." Feh.
Mate 1.6 is probably going to be great one day
Yeah I see what you are doing there. It doesn't work, because MATE is already great.
Sun Microsystems paid for usability experts to evaluate GNOME, and the results of that work were folded into GNOME 2.x, with the result that it is really usable. Plus there were man-decades of work refining and polishing the UI. It wasn't perfect (nothing is) but it was very solidly usable.
GNOME Shell threw all that in the bin. No usability studies; e.g. the minimize button was removed because one GNOME 3 developer thought about it for a little while and decided that people don't really need a minimize button. WTF.
So MATE, from day one, was much more usable than even the latest GNOME Shell. GNOME Shell isn't a complete disaster; there are still some things to like. But I just want to get my work done, and MATE, right now today, is superiour to any version of GNOME Shell.
Have gimp's tool window hints been sorted so that they don't end up behind the image window on KDE yet? I know there's the single window mode but i don't actually want it if i'm not forced by a broken kde wm to use it.
XFCE. I went from KDE 3 -> GNOME 2 -> XFCE over the years. Some day maybe KDE or GNOME will reach a good spot again, as they both have in the past. But if you need good productivity, low resource requirements and stable operation, XFCE is hard to beat right now. I'm using XFCE via Xubuntu 12.04.
Gnome Shell statistically doesn't have market share. Windows XP and Windows 7 own the market currently and neither of those was brought up. And as I'll happily use either of those over the choices you gave I think it has relevance.
I'm glad your time is free. Personally I avoid movies, music and software with crap reviews. Have I given Windows 8 a fair shot? Nope, but there are opportunity costs in installing it and trying it for a while. Opportunity costs that simply does not make sense to me given the reviews. Gnome3, even more so as I have tried Mac X and hate it and clearly that is where many of the ideas for Gnome are "borrowed" from.
You're right here -- such hard work was the case for most of the population, too. However, the nobles or big fat priests never had to interact with fishwives. Whom they had a chance to talk to? Palace guards, who were ordered to use the high language. Palace servants, ditto. No one on the road -- carriages had curtains for a reason. But, what was the primary means of long-range transport those days? Ships. And aboard a ship, one-percenters had no real way to avoid meeting a certain class of uncultured commoners.
In those times, only the wealthy could afford education, leaving the rabble illiterate. Thus, what survived to our times? Impressions written by those well-to-do. And I guess the sailors did not swear any more than most -- they happened to be the only "real" commoners the wealthy had exposure to. And they probably didn't even intend to be unpolite -- any type of speech other than the fancy palace dialect was considered rough and uncouth. The word "vulgar" meant just "common" rather than "intentionally offensive".
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
thanks auto correct evidently tried to help me and i did not notice
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Gnome WAS the standard for Linux desktops.
FTFY.
# touch universe # chmod +rwx universe #
not at all, just try tmux :-)
There is also this, which for me is reason enough to consider any and all alternatives.
People like me, singleton users, don't really care about things that make your professional life a tad more complicated. That's what you're paid for. Sorry.
At heart, you are reflecting the same corporate make-things-easy notions that underpin the adoption of Windows.
The more alternatives in Linux, the better. Fork away, people!
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Win XP better than OSX? Uh no. How do you have any credibility after making such an asinine statement? Get off your mom's computer already.
Funny, that's exactly what MS says about Open Source: It's only free if your time is worth nothing.
My time's not free, but I have this thing called "judgement", so I don't need to let some fashion following scribbler that looked at something for 5 minutes make up my mind for me.
Lets look at some numbers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems
XP: 39%
OS X: 7%
Linux: 1%
Gnome: Some fraction of 1%.
So I'd say that XP is very much current and not in the past (as I type this on an XP machine).
And yes, Win XP makes me more productive than that stupid *#S dock on OS X. A green plus button the size of pixel that does something different every time I click it and alt/cmd - tab that doesn't cycle through your windows. Now GET OFF MY LAWN!
And as much as it galls me, Microsoft has a point. How do you use your judgement without spending the time installing and using the software? I do it by reading reviews. I could have saved myself years of frustration with KDE 4 just by reading this one: http://practical-tech.com/operating-system/kde-its-time-for-a-fork/. Now I listen to what sjvn says. Hell, read the gnome developer mailing list. Half of them are unhappy.