Clement Lefebvre's stated intention
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| tracyanne May 28, 2011 10:00 AM EDT |
was to base the Mint 11 desktop on GNOME 3, but to provide a GNOME 2 style UI, instead of using GNOME Shell, In the end because he felt that GNOME 3 is still too unstable, he elected to use GNOME 2.x. Mint 12s UI will probably be based on GNOME 3 . |
| Koriel May 28, 2011 10:27 AM EDT |
You mean their World Clock was too unstable? |
| montezuma May 28, 2011 6:16 PM EDT |
Tracy, do you know if Mint will keep the classic ui with gnome 3 and version 12? |
| DrGeoffrey May 28, 2011 6:49 PM EDT |
I'm not certain even Clement knows for certain. I see multiple possible outcomes. 1) Gnome 3 somehow (and rather amazingly) straightens out their mess, leading Mint to switch. 2) Gnome continues their rather impressive screw up, but preserves the ability for distributions to stay with Gnome 2, allowing Mint to continue accordingly (without requiring a fork of gnome). 3) Gnome 3 becomes such a complete disaster that Mint is confronted with a serious dilemma. And, 4) almost any combination of the above three. I suspect possibility #3, combined with Ubuntu's own dive off the deep-end, is what led Mint to develop two editions based on Debian. After all, time has done wonders to help kde. Perhaps with sufficient years. . . But, I hasten to add, I have no special insight or connections to the Mint team. I am only a fan of lmde/xfce. |
| tracyanne May 28, 2011 8:07 PM EDT |
Quoting:Tracy, do you know if Mint will keep the classic ui with gnome 3 and version 12? @monty, I thought that was what I said. |
| montezuma May 29, 2011 6:52 PM EDT |
Yeah version 12 will be based on gnome 3 but will the ui be classic or gnome shell or (shudder) unity? |
| tracyanne May 30, 2011 12:36 AM EDT |
@monty the intention is to use Classic. I thought I already said that. If his intention was to use GNOME 3 with the classic desktop (no GNOME Shell) for Mint 11, then it stands to reason that it is also his intention to to use GNOME 3 with the classic desktop for Mint 12. His only reason for not basing the desktop on GNOME 3 for Mint 11 is because GNOME 3 is still too unstable for his liking. |
| montezuma May 30, 2011 9:39 AM EDT |
Tracy, I think he has a difficult decision to make with version 12. The classic desktop is called "Fallback Mode" in gnome 3 and will not be getting as much (gnome) developer support. It also does not have the full functionality of the old gnome 2 ui. So I would imagine at some point Mint will have to switch to either gnome shell or Unity in order to stay mainstream. I would imagine that Clem is banking on those interfaces being in a more usable state by the time he has to switch. |
| mortenalver May 30, 2011 1:13 PM EDT |
I'm worried. Gnome shell looks terrible - I didn't have the patience to try it out for long. Unity I've used a little - it makes sense for a netbook (although it still has serious flaws), but it's really a step back for a laptop or desktop. The standard Gnome 2.6 desktop works great, why is it so hard to keep the old, working stuff while at the same time experimenting with new concepts? If the Gnome developers would only make a promise that we won't lose the option to choose the classic desktop, everything would be fine. |
| Grishnakh May 30, 2011 1:40 PM EDT |
@mortenalver: "If the Gnome developers would only make a promise that we won't lose the option to choose the classic desktop, everything would be fine." Why on earth would the Gnome developers want to make such a promise to you? You don't need the classic desktop, you need to switch to the latest and greatest. If you don't like it, that's because there is something wrong with you, and you need to learn to like it, because the Gnome people are UI experts, and they know what is best for you. You need to recognize that your preferences are stupid, and that you need to bow down to the exalted UI experts of the Gnome team and use whatever they deem is best for you. |
| tuxchick May 30, 2011 4:49 PM EDT |
Thanks Grishnakh, at last I see the light! Never again will I have preferences of my own, not when all those experts know better! |
| Steven_Rosenber May 30, 2011 5:13 PM EDT |
I noticed from the announcement that Mint is adopting my favorite Linux/Unix photo-manager/image-editor -- Gthumb. No database, excellent editing tools (with the woeful ommission of "sharpen," but key inclusion of IPTC metadata in JPEGs) with the ability to "call in" GIMP whenever you wish. Try it! |
| skelband May 30, 2011 5:14 PM EDT |
Having not used any of the alternatives to Gnome/KDE yet, what is the best alternative in your guys' opinions for a longish-time Gnome user? |
| helios May 30, 2011 5:59 PM EDT |
Geez, that depends on what you want or need to do. For years, I thought I couldn't live without Konqueror as a file manager simply because it had built in mouse gestures to go forward and back in history. I spend an inordinate amount of time in the file manager so I need a fairly powerful one. I've tried all the double pane ones but just never got used to them or got them to do what I needed them to do. When I moved over to gnome, to my utter amazement I found that the side buttons on my mouse would navigate like mouse gestures. I also am able to add scripts so that I can move or copy files to any other location on right click. Thunar, which comes with XFCE just doesn't have the power of Konq or Nautilus...therefore I am not real fan. Otherwise, I think XFCE is a great DE/WM and if Thunar ever gets close to the features of the aforementioned, I will switch to it immediately. Then again, with more scripts being written for Thunar this past year, it might be there for me already. All of our production machines are running 10.94 LTS and we're fine until they expire. And yes, I know that I can drag a ton of Gnome dependencies into XFCE and have Nautilus as my default within it but that sort of defeats the purpose of using a lighter DE. |
| skelband May 30, 2011 6:12 PM EDT |
Perhaps I will have to try a few and see. I have two needs really. The family uses Ubuntu 10.10 at the moment and they are pretty happy with it. My wife would not like to see it change too much which is why I am loth to go down the Unity/Gnome Shell route for them. I can see it now "What the @#^ is this? Why is it so different to before?". These new DEs might actually work quite well for my family but people don't like change, unless there is an obvious benefit to them. I have yet to check out the Unity/Shell options yet. Who knows, they may like it. The other need is my work machine. I use Linux as my primary OS to get work done as a multi-platform developer. So no single maximised window is going to work for me. I'm actually quite happy with Gnome as it stands which is a cause of much frustration that Gnome want to change it so much. I feel that they are looking to chase an entirely different market though. I wonder if we are likely to see a fork like we did for Trinity from KDE4? That would actually make a lot of sense if someone would take on the mantle of maintaining the current DE on top of the latest Gnome base as an option separate from the Shell. The "compatibility" thing which which they are talking about keeping sounds a bit lame. |
| jdixon May 30, 2011 7:57 PM EDT |
> ...what is the best alternative in your guys' opinions for a longish-time Gnome user? For stability, maturity, and functionality, it's probably XFCE. If you're not as particular about those matters, LXDE may be your cup of tea. There are a whole bunch of other options, of course, but those seem to be the two primary challengers. As Ken notes, Thunar is not as powerful as he would like, but then he is a a power file manager user. Most people don't need the functionality level he does. Enlightenment probably also deserves a mention, but others will have to tell you about it. I haven't touched it in years. |
| skelband May 30, 2011 8:09 PM EDT |
Thanks guys, I will have a look at them tonight. |
| tuxchick May 30, 2011 8:49 PM EDT |
XFCE is pretty sweet. The one thing I miss is a good menu editor, and apps don't always install launchers in the system menu, so you have do it manually. Ubuntu's XFCE customization is Gnome-like, and can be installed in any Ubuntu (Kubuntu, Edubuntu etc.) by installing the xubuntu-default-settings package. Emelfm, Gnome Commander, Rox filer, and Midnight Commander are all super-nice file managers that go beyond what Thunar and PCmanFM can do. Don't forget IceWM or the Rox desktop. Claws, Balsa, or Thunderbird for email, Firefox, Chrome, or Opera; what do we need crazy Gnome or KDE for? |
| Sander_Marechal Jun 01, 2011 10:52 AM EDT |
Quoting:The family uses Ubuntu 10.10 at the moment and they are pretty happy with it. My wife would not like to see it change too much which is why I am loth to go down the Unity/Gnome Shell route for them. I had that last week, when I upgraded my parents to Ubuntu 11.04. They loathed Unity, even after trying a couple of days. I can't say I blame them. I disliked it myself as well quite a lot. Luckily it's easy to set Ubuntu Classic as the default environment. |
| montezuma Jun 01, 2011 11:24 AM EDT |
Sander, I hear you. That is what I did. With 11.10 though in comes gnome 3 without a doubt and then one has to hope that fall-back mode is OK or that unity is more functional. I have read that there will be some gnome developer effort put into fallback mode but we shall see. |
| Steven_Rosenber Jun 01, 2011 2:19 PM EDT |
Quoting:XFCE is pretty sweet. The one thing I miss is a good menu editor, and apps don't always install launchers in the system menu, so you have do it manually. +1 I can't figure out how to do it manually. At least in Fvwm2 you're dealing with text files that are meant to be read and written by humans. That Debian and Ubuntu dump things in the Fvwm and Fluxbox menus in a very strange way doesn't help. |
| tuxchick Jun 01, 2011 3:46 PM EDT |
Steven, this might help. Have fun:
http://wiki.xfce.org/howto/customize-menu They're XML so it's not too hard to figure from existing entries how to make modifications. But it is a pain. |
| BernardSwiss Jun 01, 2011 6:08 PM EDT |
I'm running into something similar, playing around with openbox in Mint 9 (Gnome). There is a conversion utility, but I'm not clear yet whether that will screw up the Gnome menus. I wouldn't care (much), but I'm setting this up on an old laptop, to demo Linux and especially Compiz features for a relative with vision problems -- so for now I'd rather leave the stock Gnome environment intact. So I had to search man pages and /user/share/doc for clues. By the time I'd found and backed-up the Gnome menus, it was time for bed (OK -- it wasn't that hard, it just proves I'm more into surfing than twiddling bits. But openbox is supposed to start from standards and build from there, so I was just a tad surprised.) And I personally really like being able to (even if I'm generally too lazy to) configure a desktop with a text editor on some human-comprehensible config file -- if only to make the point to Windows-users that computers are NOT some sort of high techno-magery. PS: does anybody know off-hand, whether Compiz can be made to work with mere DE's like openbox 3, etc? |
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