For heaven's sake, just use Linux Mint...
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| cmost Nov 16, 2011 3:03 PM EDT |
It is beyond me why anyone would want to shoehorn in Mint's innovative tools and desktop extensions into Ubuntu, when one could simply just install Linux Mint! Geesh! If one chooses Mint, they will also get a whole lot of desktop goodness baked into the distribution, like working codecs out of the box, third party software, etc. If Cananoical actually listened to its users, they would have implemented something similar already... they haven't. What does that tell you? |
| helios Nov 16, 2011 3:46 PM EDT |
What does that tell you? Fanboi-ism is alive and well within Ubuntu. I mean...I know fanbois....I used to be one but I've never seen it to the extent that I see it in the Ubuntu clan. |
| montezuma Nov 16, 2011 5:38 PM EDT |
@Helios, Yes they are not reacting well to the folks saying Unity does not suit them. The idea is to blame the users for laziness rather to ask whether perhaps some of their developer Gods forgot to consider what makes a users life easier. The problem starts at the top with Shuttleworth who seems to have floated away from the ordinary user thanks to his billionaire lifestye. Seems like it is non-stop BLING in the universe of Mark Shuttleworth. Users on the other hand seem to be sheep that need hearding into his next great vision. Gahhh /rant |
| tracyanne Nov 16, 2011 6:07 PM EDT |
Personally I think both you and they forget the point of Unity (and GNOME3 for that matter), they are designed to work well on tablets and other touch devices. |
| helios Nov 16, 2011 6:36 PM EDT |
No TA, I haven't forgotten that point...I've accepted it from the beginning. My point has always been that Shuttleworth fully benefited from loyal users adding tens of thousands of productive lines of codebase, art and implemented concepts into Ubuntu then shucked them off like a dirty shirt. And that mentions nothing about the grassroots marketing effort that made Ubuntu recognizable outside of our little universe. I'm in agreement with many here. He has probably done about the only thing he can do now in trying to show a profit with Ubuntu. He's simply done it by pushing huge chunks of his loyal users away and hoping he can regain them in new hand held device users. He won't. The desktop is an intimate environment for the user. One that can be molded and worked into something fairly unique and comfortable. The hand held device is a quick, convenient way to do some of the tasks that can be done on the computer, thus untethering one from the desktop, but it is not an intimate environment nor is it configurable in the sense that our desktops are. The reason this particular article may be important to many Ubuntu users is that they have their desktops installed into a working environment and cannot be bothered with a clean install of Mint....I get that. My comment pertained to the sometimes rabies-like behavior of some Ubuntu fans... Personally, as soon as 10.04 has reached EOL, we fully intend to remaster Mint to our needs and use it for HeliOS. I don't see Clem placing explosives at his founding base and destroying it the way Shuttleworth has. |
| tracyanne Nov 16, 2011 7:00 PM EDT |
Point taken I've downloaded both Mint 12 and the Kubuntu 12.04 daily build, I'll be checking out MGSE and the latest iteration of KDE4, although I won't need to make a decision until Mint 9 (Isadora) reaches EOL. |
| JohnPhys Nov 16, 2011 7:21 PM EDT |
@cmost Is it really beyond you? I get the sentiment, but there are those of us that do use Ubuntu, having upgraded through most major releases, and would like to try out the Mint Gnome-Shell extensions without completely re-installing the operating system. For some of us, Ubuntu still just works (though I'm on the 10.04 LTS for most "work", and I'm liking gnome-shell on my 11.10 installs *way* better than unity). If I can combine the ecosystem and community of Ubuntu with some extensions from Mint that help me customize gnome-shell to something I want, how is that crazy? It seems far crazier to me to advocate reinstalling and reconfiguring the OS just to try out some extensions. Your message just reads like someone who was waiting for an excuse to post another Ubuntu rant, or rant about Ubuntu "fan-bois", which is unfortunate. There are genuine things that Canonical is doing wrong with Ubuntu (Unity combined with a lack of polishing gnome-shell), along with decisions that while not particularly important just make them look bad (Rhythmbox -> Banshee -> Rhythmbox, Rbox U1 plugin not *existing* in 11.10, etc.). Unfortunately, I think the endless rants make it harder to have the discussion with Canonical in the first place. I'd much rather see them "come to their senses" rather than be beaten down to obscurity. I'm not trying to pick a fight or start a huge argument, I just wanted to point out that there are legitimate reasons a non-fanboi would want a method for installing the Mint extensions on Ubuntu. Pretending that there are no such cases is just as absurd as Canonical pretending that there are no use cases where Unity is sub-optimal. |
| tracyanne Nov 16, 2011 7:34 PM EDT |
@JohnPhys, I think most os get that, although we've moved away from Ubuntu because we dislike the decisions Canonical is making, and believe they won't "come to their senses". Personally I believe the decisions they are making, are probably good business, they just aren't good community. On the point of testing MGSE, I personally would download a full copy of Mint 12, and run it on another machine or in a VM (which is exactly what I intend to do) rather than risk screwing up my current desktop just to test something new. |
| JohnPhys Nov 16, 2011 7:42 PM EDT |
@tracyanneQuoting: we've moved away from Ubuntu because we dislike the decisions Canonical is making, and believe they won't "come to their senses" Completely valid point, I'm just hoping that they do. Quoting: On the point of testing MGSE, I personally would download a full copy of Mint 12, and run it on another machine or in a VM (which is exactly what I intend to do) rather than risk screwing up my current desktop just to test something new. That's why I maintain a separate "testing" partition for the newest release on each machine :) I'm far more comfortable testing all of the corner-cases running on the actual hardware, rather than virtualized. My "production" partitions are 10.04, and "testing" is currently 11.10, which I'm actually (to my surprise) enjoying with gnome-shell. I plan to test out the Mint extensions as well, to see if that will make it irresistible for me to upgrade (didn't see a compelling reason to go to 10.10 or 11.04). |
| skelband Nov 16, 2011 8:17 PM EDT |
Well, I just downloaded Linux Mint 12 and tried it out. I can see where they are going and it is a good step in the right direction. It all seems to pointless though. It is sufficiently different to be a PITA. All my muscle-memory actions make it difficult to change and I can't see any advantage over Gnome2 to justify to my mouse hand why I should do it. Some points: - it all looks a bit spartan, I would prefer to see some colour. It's bad enough that we are not entering Winter without my computer making me even more depressed. Contrary to a lot of people, I actually really loved the original Human brown theme of Jaunty, and the purple that Ubuntu moved to just made me feel cold. Highly subjective I know, but that's what I feel. I'm going to give MATE a try. I believe that it is available on there..... - The "proper" application menu works well but I'd like to be able to drag/drop shortcuts to the desktop, that's links to directories, applications and files generally. That's just the way I work. - I use the "Places" menu probably more often than anything else. Fewer clicks to get to that would be good. Again, Gnome 2's layout is ideal for me. |
| skelband Nov 16, 2011 9:00 PM EDT |
Does anyone know how to try out Mate on Linux Mint 12 from the Live DVD? Or do I have to install it? |
| kennethh Nov 16, 2011 9:39 PM EDT |
I fall in the middle. I don't like unity nor gnome3 but I can see that's where the money flow is for the developer's at the helm. They are doing the job, getting paid and thankfully using a friendly license which allows us to use it too or not. As for the volunteers they are just that. I think Canonical has some leaps and bounds ahead of them but anybody paying attention can recognize the moves they have made not just in regards to unity or rhythmbox/banshee, with the latter being trivial, they have made some in-roads in many different areas. Gnome3 on the other hand.. I'm sure there is some good argument to be made for them too I'm just not the one to provide it. End result is how much complaining has actually brought about improvement and change that we can agree upon. I'm not sure as I quit giving a hoot, but it appears from the new mint that they have been able to come up with a solution. I'm still not sure if they intend to adopt the mate desktop but from the above stated it appears not and that's okay too. Because? Well, there are other options for our desktop configurations. |
| cmost Nov 16, 2011 10:39 PM EDT |
@ JohnPhys Oh please. Fanboi? Hardly. I don't even use Mint, though I did several years ago. Nor do I use Gnome (or Unity or any other such nonsense; I'm fully KDE 4.x here.) I only responded because it seems to me that Ubuntu fanbois such as yourself will do anything in their desperate attempt to hang onto an OS that has simply abandoned its users in favor of its out of control developers who like to play with their own concepts instead of making an OS that actually works for people who use their computers every day. You can go ahead and justify yourself all you want. The truth of the matter is you're just afraid to give up Ubuntu for the lost cause that it is. |
| tracyanne Nov 17, 2011 6:23 AM EDT |
It doesn't look as if Mint 12 with MGSE will be suitable. First off the top panel is not removable. Second it's not possible to define a set number of virtual desktops neither of these is negotiable, as such it won't work for me. Full marks to Clem for what he's done, however. |
| montezuma Nov 17, 2011 9:58 AM EDT |
@skelband You can't run Mate from the RC livecd. It's in the release notes. |
| skelband Nov 17, 2011 2:40 PM EDT |
@montezuma: Read the release notes, but somehow managed to miss that sentence :D OK, well it works fine for me. Installed to a VM and tried it out. Looks promising... |
| JaseP Nov 17, 2011 11:32 PM EDT |
Ken (Helios Ken), I agree with a lot of what you are saying, save one thing,... You say that mobiles are not customizable, but that is very untrue. From my old Palm pilots (4 different ones, from an m100 to a TX), my old Nokia N800, to a Viliv S5, multiple netbooks, and several Android devices,... all were VERY customizable. Each one of them provided a unique experience, once customized.My current tablet, the Acer Iconia a500, is no exception. |
| Grishnakh Nov 18, 2011 1:02 AM EDT |
You say that mobiles are not customizable, but that is very untrue. From my old Palm pilots (4 different ones, from an m100 to a TX), my old Nokia N800, to a Viliv S5, multiple netbooks, and several Android devices,... all were VERY customizable. Yes, but Apple's devices aren't customizable at all. So Unity and Gnome are trying to ape Apple by also eliminating customizability, thinking that'll make them just as popular as Apple. |
| JaseP Nov 18, 2011 9:49 AM EDT |
Yes, Gris,... But you're making the common error, that's getting made nowadays, that mobile equals Apple. They didn't invent the darned form factor (ANY of them), they just made it stylish & hip. |
| Grishnakh Nov 18, 2011 1:07 PM EDT |
@JaseP: I'm not making that error, the Gnome and Unity people are. That's why they're trying to copy Apple by having non-customizable UIs. |
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