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GNOME2 Fork MATE Desktop 1.6 Released

Posted by Unknown on from the desktops-for-everyone dept.

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.

86 comments

  1. Yaaay! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    First post!

  2. Pointless fork by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Having just made the move to gnome3, I now feel this is pointless. Sure the defaults were not to my liking, but some extensions and a little tweaking has left me with a very positive impresson.

    1. Re:Pointless fork by kthreadd · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Pointless fork by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Pointless fork by jedidiah · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.
    4. Re:Pointless fork by KiloByte · · Score: 4, Funny

      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.
    5. Re:Pointless fork by ichthus · · Score: 3, Informative

      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
    6. Re:Pointless fork by Nerdfest · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    7. Re:Pointless fork by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      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.

    8. Re:Pointless fork by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      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).

    9. Re:Pointless fork by jcdr · · Score: 1

      ... the basic desktop configurations that GNOME2 does like multi-head-separate-screen.

      Ca you please provide a link that describes this feature ?

    10. Re:Pointless fork by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      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.

    11. Re:Pointless fork by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      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.

    12. Re:Pointless fork by MurukeshM · · Score: 1

      Don't confuse GNOME3 with GNOME Shell..

    13. Re:Pointless fork by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Some of use find KDE barely more palatable than GNOME Shell or Unity.

    14. Re:Pointless fork by efitton · · Score: 0

      What difference does it make? I use Windows since KDE4 and all my GTK programs run fine.

    15. Re:Pointless fork by HiThere · · Score: 2

      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.
    16. Re:Pointless fork by ichthus · · Score: 1

      Right there with you. I ))HATE(( KIO for samba and end up just using mount.cifs for anything serious.

      --
      sig: sauer
    17. Re:Pointless fork by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      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 [...]

    18. Re:Pointless fork by Nivag064 · · Score: 1

      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...)

    19. Re:Pointless fork by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      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.

    20. Re:Pointless fork by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      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.

    21. Re:Pointless fork by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      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.

    22. Re:Pointless fork by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      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.

    23. Re:Pointless fork by KiloByte · · Score: 1

      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.
    24. Re:Pointless fork by MareLooke · · Score: 1

      There is also this, which for me is reason enough to consider any and all alternatives.

    25. Re:Pointless fork by reallocate · · Score: 1

      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"
  3. Gnome is cool but .. by invictusvoid · · Score: -1

    Gnome is cool .. no doubt . But All I really need is xterm :) ;) ------------ --- brotherhood of command line users ----

    1. Re:Gnome is cool but .. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      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.

    2. Re:Gnome is cool but .. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      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 :)

    3. Re:Gnome is cool but .. by Metal_Militia · · Score: 1

      not at all, just try tmux :-)

  4. THANK GOD FOR MATE! (and the developers...) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    'nuff said

    1. Re:THANK GOD FOR MATE! (and the developers...) by doti · · Score: 1

      Amen

      --
      factor 966971: 966971
    2. Re:THANK GOD FOR MATE! (and the developers...) by fnj · · Score: 1

      You said it, brothers.

  5. This was a pointless fork... Gnome 3 has matured.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    ...and is an excellent desktop. The best of the bunch when you consider the positively creaky OSX and the schizophrenic Win 8. It's also the only credible desktop that will work well for touch based form factors. Linux finally gets a professionally designed, polished desktop that is vastly better than the proprietary competition, and the Win7/Gnome 2 community spits on it. These same people would have complained about Win 95 because they liked the 3.1 program manager and app windows.

  6. As a mate desktop user by lister+king+of+smeg · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:As a mate desktop user by TheSpoom · · Score: 4, Informative

      I think the idea with forking everything was that they could rely on the forked programs working correctly inside MATE, instead of attempting to force newer versions of those programs from Gnome 3 to work inside an older desktop environment. Also, it (theoretically) lets you run MATE and Gnome 3 on the same computer without conflicts.

      --
      It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
      - E. Debs
    2. Re:As a mate desktop user by fnj · · Score: 1

      Bingo.

  7. Re:This was a pointless fork... Gnome 3 has mature by jedidiah · · Score: 2

    ...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.
  8. It's the refactoring. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  9. translators are people too! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "1800 contributions by 39 people, and more than 150 translators"

    1. Re:translators are people too! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Quiet, you! Pope Francis has declared that translators are not people.

  10. Re:This was a pointless fork... Gnome 3 has mature by lister+king+of+smeg · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.
  11. Re:This was a pointless fork... Gnome 3 has mature by Sarten-X · · Score: 1

    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.
  12. Example of truly owning software by duckgod · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Example of truly owning software by unixisc · · Score: 1

      On the KDE side, the same is true of Trinity DE

    2. Re:Example of truly owning software by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 3, Insightful

      > In the physical world at least one could use adapters and such to keep a product useful.

      In the hardware world it is called "Forced Obsolescence"

      Apple is a master of it. i.e. micro-DVI, PowerPC, etc.

      Microsoft keeps trying and failing as businesses reject every other version. i.e. "Don't fix what isn't broken". The ONLY reason to ever update an OS is:
        a) security / bug-fixes
        b) features / drivers

      Sadly, it is Microsoft's best interest to NOT fix/add features so they can continue to sell you new versions which essentially the do the same thing as the previous version, but differently.

      Apple is a little saner by standardizing things such as System Preferences. Microsoft doesn't know a fucking thing about consistency.

      But yes open-source-software is By the People, For the People. :-)

    3. Re:Example of truly owning software by HiThere · · Score: 1

      Has Trinity become usable? The last time I tried to test it it required removing multiple packages, and then after I bit the bullet and did that, it didn't add itself to the login choices. So I've been reluctant to try it again.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    4. Re:Example of truly owning software by Microlith · · Score: 1

      It's "Planned Obsolescence," actually, and isn't highlighted by the examples you cite, as those are caused by shifts in industry (the shift away from PowerPC was now 7 years ago.)

      A better example is how handset makers design a device and support it poorly once it is sold (leaving security holes open, not porting versions of Android that the hardware is more than capable of running) with the goal of rendering it obsolete and pushing users to buy the next device.

    5. Re:Example of truly owning software by Nivag064 · · Score: 1

      Micro who?

    6. Re:Example of truly owning software by efitton · · Score: 1

      Have you looked at Windows XP market share? By the time I have to abandon Windows 7, Windows 9 or 10 will be here and at some point Microsoft will listen to their customers (especially businesses). If they don't listen they lose revenue, etc. and bad stuff happens. When Gnome developers don't listen you get Gnome 3 and the "self congratulating echo chamber." They don't know how many users they have, they don't have forums, they don't have voting on bugzilla. They are scratching their personal software itch and f-you if you don't like it.

      I really want to be back on Linux but in at least once sense I'm guessing Microsoft will be more responsive to my needs than Jon McCann and other Gnome developers. They just tell me I'm using my computer incorrectly. Huzzah.

    7. Re:Example of truly owning software by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

      Micro-DVI to DVI adaptor, Part Number: MB204G. http://www.amazon.com/Apple-MB204G-Micro-DVI-Video-Adapter/dp/B0012RAI84

      It was only available on first gen MacBook Air.

      Here, this page might help you in the future and you can see the insanity of having X standards.

        * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_connectors

    8. Re:Example of truly owning software by Nivag064 · · Score: 1

      Hmm...

      I was trying to point out, possibly too subtly, that Microsoft is now essentially irrelevant!

    9. Re:Example of truly owning software by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

      Quickly becoming that way, but sadly not yet. :-/

    10. Re:Example of truly owning software by Nivag064 · · Score: 1

      Yes, when a large animal is dying, you can still be mortally wounded by their death spasms.

      I'm more worried by Apple, but Apple has already lost the server wars, and seems to be starting to lose in the smart phone & tablet space. I think we are starting to see manufacturers & OEMs (those in the consumer electronics and phone segments) that are beholden to neither Apple nor Microsoft, start moving up the food chain - the current battleground is tablets, next is laptops...

      Note all eBooks are based on Linux, and so are 'smart' TV's. There are probably people who boast that they are totally Microsoft, but don't realize that they already have Linux in devices they own, except that it is not widely known.

      Essentially companies can innovate faster with Linux. Also, the cost of maintaining & enhancing Linux and associated software is shared by a very large group of companies (some very large like IBM) - so the real cost of using Linux for a company is less than that of a proprietary operating system (even for the likes of Apple & Microsoft).

      Having the source code means that companies can make changes very fast themselves, such as when they can use a cheaper support chip. Note that companies that compete bitterly at marketing, can cooperate in enhancing the Linux kernel. Also everyone knows what's coming up in the next release of the Linux kernel, unlike a Microsoft O/S - see the court case where Microsoft did the dirty on Word Perfect.

      http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20130226153347343
      [...]
      Novell's arguments are clear and powerful. "A reasonable jury could find that Microsoft's conduct was anticompetitive because it harmed Novell, was not competition on the merits, and was reasonably capable of contributing significantly to maintaining Microsoft's monopoly power in the operating systems market," Novell writes. Nowhere, it says, does Microsoft defend Microsoft's conduct as competition on the merits. And Microsoft's brief neglected to mention to the appeals court, or respond to, the District Court's conclusion that a jury could have found Microsoft's justifications for its conduct "to be pretextual." Worse, Microsoft is asking the appeals court to confer immunity on it "for deception of competitors regardless of the effect on competition."
      [...]

      It takes several years for companies to build the skills & experience of creating a good user experience using Linux, and now several companies have already mastered that hurdle for phones & tablets. Hence Apple's initial advantage is evaporating here.

      I and my youngest son (15) both have Linux laptops that never had Microsoft installed. He prefers it to the Apple desktop, but he had previous experience of Linux on the desktop. When he was 9 he did a poster for school showing the advantages of Linux, something to do with economics I think.

  13. Re:This was a pointless fork... Gnome 3 has mature by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    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.

  14. Re:This was a pointless fork... Gnome 3 has mature by armanox · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  15. Re:This was a pointless fork... Gnome 3 has mature by fnj · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  16. Re:This was a pointless fork... Gnome 3 has mature by Sarten-X · · Score: 1

    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.
  17. Re:This was a pointless fork... Gnome 3 has mature by Arker · · Score: 1

    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.
  18. Re: This was a pointless fork... Gnome 3 has matur by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Use a minimal window manager like DWM.

  19. Re:This was a pointless fork... Gnome 3 has mature by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I can't find a single review that claims what you said, and all the screenshots make it look pretty shitty.

  20. Meaningless Semantics by efitton · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If you install Gnome3 you get Gnome Shell. Gnome Shell is the Gnome experience.

    1. Re:Meaningless Semantics by pizzap · · Score: 1

      I'm under the impression Ubuntu Unity is based on gnome3, too. Compare the running processes, there is not much difference.

    2. Re:Meaningless Semantics by efitton · · Score: 1

      And it is called Unity, not Unity running on Gnome3.

  21. Re:This was a pointless fork... Gnome 3 has mature by sjames · · Score: 1

    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.

  22. Nice of them to make the effort by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... but I have jumped to KDE like so many others.

  23. Re:This was a pointless fork... Gnome 3 has mature by Mister+Liberty · · Score: 1

    Exactly.

    And 'death of the PC' -- wouldn't that in its wake
    automatiaslly bring about the death of ... smartphone,
    tablet, embedded, you name it??

    After all ... let me rephrase that -- does anybody know
    of anyone doing coding, software development, app-
    writing, whatever you want to call it, doing coding on
    a .... tablet!!??

  24. First I was crying about it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Now I got used to it and moved on, ....

  25. Re:This was a pointless fork... Gnome 3 has mature by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    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.

  26. this is a subject by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This fork is pointless, why fork gnome 2 when you can install a tilling wm?

    1. Re:this is a subject by Zan+Lynx · · Score: 1

      Another Windows Metro/Modern fan I see. Big news for you! Windows Blue will allow you to choose your tile sizes!

    2. Re:this is a subject by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thats got to be worth another $25 surely.

  27. Pathetic.. Proves my original point. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    As if the desktop and tablets are mutually exclusive. I've now got a larger laptop than I've ever owned before (15.6") and Gnome 3 is and excellent fit for it. I do all my windows development on this same machine, via VirtualBox. I see we even have a defender of Program Manager that crawled out of some Rock. Maybe he can tell us about how we were all crazy to leave behind Motif and WindowMaker.

    Gnome is the standard for Linux desktops. Period. Not KDE, not Cinnamon, not some stupid fork like Mate that was obviously dead before it ever got off the ground, and not that lame ass Ubuntu Unity, which is just crap.

    The only sheep here are the fools that want their 1990's era WIMP metaphor back.

    1. Re:Pathetic.. Proves my original point. by r_a_trip · · Score: 2

      Gnome WAS the standard for Linux desktops.

      FTFY.

      --
      # touch universe # chmod +rwx universe # ./universe
  28. Oh, well if some weenie Journalist doesn't see it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...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.

  29. Really? Which major desktop am I missing... BEOS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Win8, OSX and Gnome Shell actually have marketshare. What else should I compare it to?

  30. Notice I also mentioned OSX. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...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.

  31. XFCE is a good solution by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    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.

  32. Re:Really? Which major desktop am I missing... BEO by efitton · · Score: 1

    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.

  33. Opportunity Cost by efitton · · Score: 1

    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.

  34. Re:This was a pointless fork... Gnome 3 has mature by lister+king+of+smeg · · Score: 1

    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.
  35. XP or Win7.. At least your not living in the past. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    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.

  36. It's OSX, not 'Mac X' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    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.

  37. Lets Look at Data by efitton · · Score: 1

    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!

  38. Pedantic Putz by efitton · · Score: 1

    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.