Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
I would have said the vajazzled version.
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
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.