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Debian Switching Back To GNOME As the Default Desktop
An anonymous reader writes: Debian will switch back to using GNOME as the default desktop environment for the upcoming Debian 8.0 Jessie release, due out in 2015. The decision is based on accessibility and systemd integration, along with a host of other reasons. Debian switched away from GNOME back in 2012 .
MATE is also more familiar to users of previous versions of Debian, which is why I use it on my netbook.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
Come, join us, Cinnamon is what you want.
Mod parent up further. I didn't realize how badly the GNOME team screwed the pooch until I tried running Deb 7 and Deb 8 testing to get a new laptop to work.
I am at a complete loss as to why I should have to use a click-and-drag "swipe" gesture to unlock the screen on my workstation in the default configuration of GNOME 3 that comes with Jessie. I'm also not too fond of the default on for all the smart--phone centric gestures that mess up all of my window positioning if I accidentally mouse to the corner of the screen.
I use Debian 6 for an operator console for a piece of heavy moving machinery, and I will not upgrade to Deb 7 or 8 for as long as I can because my whole workflow is based on the quaintly named "classic desktop model" where screens and windows don't magically resize and change position if I sneeze. I am truing to put off as long as I can the task of having to figure out all of these "features" in GNOME 3 or KDE how to disable them so that I can use it for my operator console without fear of an accidental version of the killer poke. I'd switch to LXDE or XFCE, but they're a little too light-weight for my taste, and I don't want to switch to MATE because all the executables have been renamed and I'd lose compatibility with my legacy systems that run GNOME 2. Geez.
You don't have to drag to unlock. Press Escape or just typing your password.
XFCE is problematic. It's lacking developer resources and the last stable release is from 2 years ago. Its compositor is based on XRender (not OpenGL) and causes tearing. There are also no desktop effects.
Unity is a good choice for Mac OS X users because of some similarities.
Clearly you've never used OS X for any amount of time to make such a ridiculous claim. Unity is almost nothing like OS X beyond a couple of superficial similarities that, outside of the left hand buttons, don't even functionally act the same as the OS X counterpart it is trying to mimic. Long-time OS X users tend to despise Unity for its superficial cargo cult look.
Jeezus, Canonical didn't want to Debian to adopt systemd, they wanted to them to go with Upstart you idiot.
I don't want to switch to MATE because all the executables have been renamed and I'd lose compatibility with my legacy systems that run GNOME 2.
Okay, my advice to you: switch to MATE.
They renamed all the executables because they had to. For some reason that I don't understand, GNOME cannot have 2.x and 3.x on the same system; somehow they screwed the library versioning all to hell and it doesn't work. So the MATE developers renamed everything, so that people could install MATE and GNOME on the same system without any problems.
You can install GNOME 2.x and MATE side by side and they won't fight. Try it.
Maybe the future is Cinnamon. But I'm still running MATE. It just works, and just keeps on working. If you just want to get your work done and not fight with your DE, use MATE.
You need to look into it deeper. It didn't happen that way at all.
Canonical wanted Debian to pick upstart (naturally as it was their software). Once Debian chose systemd though and with RHEL already switching away from upstart to systemd, Canonical felt that being left as the only distro still using upstart wasn't tenable any more. Staying aligned with Debian was more important than getting what they wanted.
> I am at a complete loss as to why I should have to use a click-and-drag "swipe" gesture to unlock the screen on my workstation in the default configuration of GNOME 3 that comes with Jessie.
You don't. Just type your password and it gets unlocked automatically.