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MATE To Make It Into Debian Repositories
sfcrazy writes "Fans of the MATE desktop environment, which is a fork of Gnome 2, will be happy to know that MATE is scheduled to be included in the official Debian repositories. Early 2012, it was requested that MATE be included in said repositories, and almost 2 years later, it appears we're almost there."
Ubuntu is hardly a successor to Debian. It's more of a hanger on. Debian will be around long after Canonical goes bankrupt.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Mate
How many times will they check MATE before it's done?
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Quit being such a pawn.
MATE is definitely not "mainstream". The mainstream follows hot trends, like the tablet-ification and dumbing-down of desktop GUIs. MATE is the opposite of this. MATE is an admission that the desktop metaphor was already perfected 10 or 15 years ago, and that what we really need is a stable, polished, feature-complete implementation of it. Cinnamon and XFCE are in the same camp, with cinnamon opting to use newer technology to achieve a similar result.
MATE going into the debian repository is a great thing. It gives credit to the notion that certain design concepts and certain software, although "dated", is so practical, sensible, and useful that it's worth keeping around for years to come.
> A problem with Linux in general is there is simply too much choice and no apparent standardization.
Yet the thing you are screeching about right now is the very essence of "consistency" in terms of the principle that "computer interfaces should be consistent". This project is a response to others running off the rails and trying to follow the latest trend no matter how absurd it is.
MATE is what truly conforms to formal academic notions of proper UI design. So do the standard Unix shells.
MATE will be less of a shock to people used to the last 15 years of Windows interfaces. It will be less confusing than the flavor of the month from Ubuntu, Microsoft, or Apple.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
MATE is fantastic for those of us who liked GNOME 2 and want to continue using it and receiving updates for it. They're not including it by default from what I can tell, they're just making it an option to install in the repos. I'm pretty happy about this, I'll definitely be using it.
"mongo only pawn, in game of life"
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
The original article seems to be Slashdotted (hey, can we still do that?!), but from the MATE blog:
http://mate-desktop.org/blog/2013-11-08-debian-mate-packaging-team/
"The MATE Team is very happy to say hello to the new Debian MATE Packaging Team, that is working hard to get MATE included into the next release of Debian...First packages are already in the repositories and there are many others in ftp-master NEW queue."
which links to:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=708385#31
"The plan is to provide MATE inside the Debian archive before the end of the year (if the FTP master time will find enough time to review our uploads)."
Of course if you don't mind using the upstream repository, you can install it right now:
http://wiki.mate-desktop.org/download
That's going a little bit far to say it was perfected 10-15 years ago. I'd assert that it is more a recognition that the attempts to go beyond what we had 10-15 years ago have taken us in the wrong direction.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
I would have said the vajazzled version.
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
what the fuck are you talking about. Ubuntu is not a successor by any means, it sits firmly downstream.
If debian where to go away tommorow, Ubuntu would go away in 6 months, because they still pull packages from debian to make their new versions.
Also, debian runs on a wide variety of hardware Ubuntu won't run on, in fact one of the widest variety and its a better general purpose OS.
Also, Debian has the lead market share in the server world, so I'd love for you to tell all the companies who run debian-stable servers they need to ditch them for ubuntu-server.
http://w3techs.com/blog/entry/debian_is_now_the_most_popular_linux_distribution_on_web_servers
I think you've lost track of reality. You don't even know what a hipster is.
You are mistaken. XFCE (although I use it myself) has certainly never been mainstream, and LXDE (are you kidding?) has never even been on the radar. Here in the linux world, although there are many GUIs to choose from, gnome and KDE are the only two that have ever remotely qualified as "mainstream" (and maybe FVWM if you want to go way back). This is coming from someone who has used linux almost exclusively since '97, and has seen the entire evolution with his own eyes.
The problem in this instance is that MATE is basically a fork of GNOME which was already in the repository. It's my understanding that a lot of stuff had to be sorted out to prevent clashes and to ensure that Debian doesn't end up with a bunch of garbage packages that will have to be maintained for the next Debian release.
If you want a quick-to-adapt distro, try Ubuntu. It was so quick to adapt that it quickly adapted a whole new desktop environment as default overnight once during a routine system update.
The basic Unix approach is almost universal, both Linux and Windows using a bash command line, and just about everything but Windows being built on a Unix style base. That approach has stood the test of time in the face of new bright ideas. Likewise, I would say Windows 2000 prior to the XP bubblegum theme was pretty much the desktop+start button approach done right. The 2D array of icons of iOS and Android will, I imagine again be seen as a long term successful design. The problem is that big business is desperate to find the 'next big thing' to try to monopolise and own it to maximise their bottom line.
Abandoning old ideas as 'dated' is a mark of the 'planned obselescence' business model that much of modern industry has adopted: effectively moving from the 'buy stuff' model to the 'rent stuff and surrender control' model, that is good for business, bad for consumers, but easy to force if government regulation doesn't stop this market degeneracy.
John_Chalisque
I design UIs occasionally. What iconography would you suggest replace the floppy disk for save? The down arrow and some bits? No, That's download. Why all the bucking for naught? Must technology be averse to its own history to the extent that we can't just have a beloved memorable data store remain the symbol for storage, simply because tweens haven't ever used one and Sony stopped making them? I still use floppies daily but I make OSs as a hobby, so admittedly I'm an extreme outlier. Most folks don't know what a hard drive looks like. They equate optical disks to burning and playing media. I've still got a tape drive for my big backups, but icons sporting a cassette or reel-to-reel are confusing and more out dated than the floppy -- The grand ol' floppy who's drive access sounds heralded the explosion of accessible computing for humanity.
When holographic Crystal Storage becomes the new de-facto storage standard a gleaming spinning cube will be a suitable iconic replacement representation. Until then, you get to see a floppy -- Because nothing else makes any damn sense, and words take up more space than icons.
I used to use GNOME 2 & found that the GNOME devs kept dropping useful features, then GNOME 3 came along and was essentially a triumph of FASHION over FUNCTIONALITY. I initially fled to xfce, now I use MATE.
I have 30" monitor, I have 35 virtual desktops of which about half are in use. An unused virtual desktop is blank with a bland background, and my 2 highly customised panels are always hidden unless I need to access them.
GNOME 3 is very cluttered. and gets in the way of easy use. GNOME devs seems to think that what they want is more important than letting me do things the way I find best - they have Apple's disease! I am glad that I was not supporting clients with GNOME 2 - as the change from a sort of working Desktop Environment, to the total disaster of GNOME 3 was the most depressing & annoying change I've ever had to suffer in Linux.
MATE started as a clone of GNOME 2 with the useful parts added back in, but now they are adding new features in there own right.
Yes, it's true. Debian is part of Ubuntu's ecosystem. Just like oxygen is part of my ecosystem. If I don't get adequate oxygen, I'll die. If Ubuntu doesn't get adequate Debian, then Ubuntu will die. The revers is not true, of course. If oxygen doesn't get any of me, oxygen won't die - nor will Debian die for lack of Ubuntu.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
How about the word 'Save'? Why does everything have to be an icon?
On the news about MATE, that's good to see. Fwiw, I dumped Ubuntu for Lubuntu (LXDE) as soon as I saw Unity. While I think the water's a bit muddy (MATE, LXDE, XFCE...) it's still nice to see the options there.
Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. - John 14:6 NLT