Linux Mint 12 Released Today 396
An anonymous reader writes "Linux Mint 12 was released today. It includes the new 'MGSE' (Mint Gnome Shell Extensions), a desktop layer on top of Gnome 3 that makes it possible for you to use Gnome 3 in a traditional way. MGSE's Gnome-2-Like experience includes features such as the bottom panel, the application menu, the window list, a task-centric desktop and visible system tray icons. MGSE is a 180-degree turn from the desktop experience the Gnome Team is developing with Gnome-Shell. At the heart of the Gnome-Shell is a feature called 'the Overview': 'The Shell is designed in order to minimize distraction and interruption and to enable users to focus on the task at hand. A persistent window list or dock would interfere with this goal, serving as a constant temptation to switch focus. The separation of window switching functionality into the overview means that an effective solution to switching is provided when it is desired by the user, but that it is hidden from view when it is not necessary.' The popularity of Mint 12 with MGSE may be an excellent barometer as to whether users prefer a task-centric or application-centric desktop."
Interesting, but (Score:5, Interesting)
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No, but since Gnome 2 isn't being developed any more, there's not much choice if you don't want to use a crappy interface which tries to hide some of the most important tools from users.
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It's an option in Mint 12, actually.
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http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_lisa_whatsnew.php#mate
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It is an option but the font rendering is on par with FVWM so everything looks like Windows 95. LXDE is a better choice.
Re:Interesting, but (Score:4, Informative)
1. Font rendering in anything Gnome is all done by freetype regardless of the toolkit libraries.
2. fvwm is a window manager.
Re:Interesting, but (Score:5, Interesting)
0. Why make everything in lists?
To keep track of in how many ways someone is wrong.
1. Then why does MATE look like shit compared to Gnome?
Either, you are blind, or you are noticing difference in composite window manager effects, and attribute them to fonts. Compositing works just fine under everything now, just not everyone enables it by default.
2. Yes, but you know what I mean.
Unless you mean "I have no idea what a UI toolkit is", I do not.
Re:Interesting, but (Score:4, Interesting)
You are still fundamentally wrong -- the look of fonts, or anything at all, is not any worse in GNOME 2 / GTK+ 2 compared to GNOME 3 / GTK+ 3. Composite window manager works just fine, however GNOME 2 did not make it mandatory out of the blue or made its core functionality dependent on it like GNOME 3 and Unity did.
Overall functionality of GNOME 2, especially considering the availability of applets and working window manager options, is far superior.
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1/2/3 is an abbreviation of paragraphs beginning Firstly, Secondly, Thirdly. Since no additive function is possible, item-1 plus item-2 doesn't produce item-3, there's no Zerothly.
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zerously?
Re:Interesting, but (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Interesting, but (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Interesting, but (Score:5, Informative)
Same here. I loaded Mint 12 with Gnome 3 today. The option to use the Gnome 2 seemed like a waste of time. I like Gnome 3, use it on a Fedora 16 laptop. On Mint, everything worked right out of the box, including samba. Good stuff
My two bits
Re:Interesting, but (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Interesting, but (Score:5, Interesting)
Since you seem to like switching distros rather than window managers/desk top environments, try Xubuntu. All the "goodness" of ubuntu, with all the goodness of XFCE (kindda like Gnome2 but not on life support and without all the crap baked in).
Re:Interesting, but (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, and it's the only way to keep a similar experience across distros. Many people dislike gnome team's choice, and are implementing their own (different) solutions.
Well, i suppose the KDE people are doing just fine... And we thought no one could surpass kde4 trauma; never underestimate the gnome team...
I personally will remain away from gnome. Gnome2 had its own silliness and it was hard forgiving things like that horrible registry re-implementation. Well no more, this year i abandoned gnome for good.
Kudos to the Mint people devoting efforts to revert user alienation; I'm sure they will gain a few more fans with this move.
Actually XFCE can be made to look the same, including the "Places" menu, dual panels, etc. Some things are better in XFCE such as changing window button positions (drag n drop vs cryptic gconf). Desktop compositing is available, and can be turned off.
Wife Won't Let Me Upgrade (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Interesting, but (Score:5, Informative)
will it offer any benefit over just using GNOME 2?
GNOME 3's other improvements [gnome.org], performance, desktop search, themes, enhanced user interface layout engine ?
GNOME 3 is not just GNOME 2 with a few panels removed and window switching changed around.
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Gnome 3 is trying it's best to be a tablet's GUI. The desktop users are being tasked with beta testing that in lieu of maintaining a more traditional and usable interface.
Have you actually tried to use GNOME 3? (Score:5, Interesting)
In all honesty, have you actually tried to use GNOME 3?
I've used all sorts of desktop environments over the years, and GNOME 3 is by far the worst I've ever used. I'm not even joking when I say that CDE from the early 1990s was easier to use, more efficient to use, and provided a much more enjoyable user experience.
If there are performance improvements in GNOME 3, I sure as fuck didn't experience them. It was noticeably slower on my system than KDE 4 is. It wasn't just one or two apps, either. Everything about GNOME 3 feels so much slower.
The desktop search is useless, just like it is on Windows and Mac OS X. It's a stupid paradigm. It takes the worst of shell auto-completion, and tries to make it act like a web search engine, with spectacularly shitty results.
The themes support is a step backward. It has only made it easier for theme designers to use crap like gradients, curved corners and transparency. While these may help make GNOME 3 more hipster-compatible, they do absolutely nothing to make the resulting UI more effective in any way.
It's also a royal pain in the ass to develop for, although this has always been the case for GNOME. GObject is a pathetic hack. If you want object-oriented C, then just use C++ or Objective-C. But that was apparently too sensible for the GNOME developers.
XFCE is where it's at. It hits that sweet spot between functionality, simplicity, and excellent performance. GNOME 3, on the other hand, manages to be the worst at everything possible.
Re:Have you actually tried to use GNOME 3? (Score:5, Insightful)
In all honesty, have you actually tried to use GNOME 3?
All the time.
So much so that I find myself tapping the Windows key in every other OS and wishing it would show me all open windows. Whoever thought that one out is brilliant: hit the key, boom, there's everything you're running, hit it again, boom, back to the original window, if you don't select one of the others. Hit it, boom, all windows again, pick one, boom, it's there. Hit it again, close a few, hit it, boom, back where we were.
Brilliant. Beats the snot out of alt-tabbing and the myriad of Expose ripoffs.
GNOME3 has some significant rough edges (some config options aren't exposed, the font size choices in the list of apps is troublesome, NetworkManager is messed up and notification is whack, hard dependencies on Evolution in Fedora bug the hell out of me) but there's some really, really good ideas there.
What I've found is that, well, people don't like change. I admit it made me uncomfortable, but I also found I didn't get fed up fighting little idiosyncracies like I do with KDE, or the sense that it's really, really under-developed (Unity). It was a few days of "huh" and then it worked.
Re:Have you actually tried to use GNOME 3? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes! I too keep hitting the windows key on windows desktops and getting annoyed that I can't see all my windows like I wanted. I've got the Gnome 3 key shortcuts solidly embedded in my muscle memory over the last 6 months, and trying to do things in other desktops just seems really clunky and inefficient now.
For my use, Gnome 3 is faster and easier than any other DE I've seriously used. An investment of five minutes spent reading the Gnome 3 cheat sheet [gnome.org] pays off handsomely.
And on my wee netbook (AA1 ZG5), Gnome 3 (Fedora 16) is faster and smoother than Gnome 2 (Fedora 14) was. Honest, it is. How much of that is due to Fedora getting better, and how much to Gnome 3, I don't know.
Re:Have you actually tried to use GNOME 3? (Score:5, Informative)
t's also a royal pain in the ass to develop for, although this has always been the case for GNOME. GObject is a pathetic hack. If you want object-oriented C, then just use C++ or Objective-C.
The nice thing about using vanilla C is that you can then easily wrap it for use in other languages, which you cannot easily do with Obj-C or C++ (Obj-C selector names are too idiosyncratic for most other languages, and full C++ object model is too complicated). My take on GObject is that it's not there to be used directly - it's more like an API and ABI for higher-level bindings. If you want a "native" language, with matching object model and all concepts exposed directly - akin to what Obj-C is for Cocoa - then Vala [gnome.org] offers that for GObject. Otherwise, there's PyGtk, Gtk# etc.
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if you have a c++ API and cannot expose it through a simplified C-style wrapper (using extern "C" functions), then you use SWIG to generate an API for use.
As it is, what's happened is that wrappers are written over and over again for all the languages that want to use this GObject API.
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As it is, what's happened is that wrappers are written over and over again for all the languages that want to use this GObject API.
Last I checked, wrappers for GObject libraries are normally generated, not hand-written.
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"The desktop search is useless, just like it is on Windows and Mac OS X. It's a stupid paradigm. It takes the worst of shell auto-completion, and tries to make it act like a web search engine, with spectacularly shitty results."
Results and behaviour can definitely be improved. In concept, idea is superb (I loved OS X Spotlight when it was introduced), and it is how people actually use computers everyday.
"The themes support is a step backward. It has only made it easier for theme designers to use crap like g
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Re:Interesting, but (Score:5, Insightful)
performance
Untrue. Most people know better. Try GNOME 3 on a netbook (for example) after using GNOME 2.
I'm not insinuating that the performance is unusable. But to say it performs faster is just sheer misinformation or inexperience. It's noticeably slower and clunky. You'd expect it to be though, because it's doing sophisticated animations, etc. If your video drivers aren't up to the task (which is probably likely, given the fragile state of Linux graphics), you're going to feel it.
The more important issue right now is that it's fairly unstable and buggy. Maybe the GNOME software itself is the cause, or maybe it's the video drivers. I can't really go 10 minutes without minor (yet persistent) rendering issues, and can't go an hour without the shell completely freezing and requiring a restart. (Get used to hitting Alt+F2, typing "r", and hitting Enter.) I'm using GNOME 3.2 by the way.
There's no real benefit to using GNOME 3 yet. The new paradigm they're going for isn't as bad as people say it is, but it isn't a clear-cut improvement over the ways of old either. Some things are better, some are worse. Combine that with the fairly disrespectful way that GNOME 3 was rolled out, and it isn't hard to see where all the disdain comes from. Linux Mint is the only distro I see respecting its users, particularly by creating a path for transitioning via extensions and offering MATE.
GNOME will be in a better position a year from now, I imagine. GNOME 3 will mature, they'll get to implement more of their ideas, and there will surely be a ton of extensions and themes. (This all assumes that video drivers will improve too. If they don't, GNOME 3 will simply never be pleasant to use.)
Re:Interesting, but (Score:5, Interesting)
performance
Untrue. Most people know better. Try GNOME 3 on a netbook (for example) after using GNOME 2.
I'm not insinuating that the performance is unusable. But to say it performs faster is just sheer misinformation or inexperience. It's noticeably slower and clunky. You'd expect it to be though, because it's doing sophisticated animations, etc. If your video drivers aren't up to the task (which is probably likely, given the fragile state of Linux graphics), you're going to feel it.
As you indicated yourself, GPU drivers are a major factor.
GNOME Shell relies on Mutter as WM which is composite-only. Composite OpenGL WMs (Mutter but also Compiz or KWin) can perform dramatically better than traditional WMs if the drivers are up to the task (and if the GPU was made in the last 5 or so years). So your quoted statement above is actually misinformation or inexperience.
Broken drivers are not the fault of the WM or its authors.
My main setup is KDE Plasma Desktop / KWin on a low-end laptop with NVidia 9200M GPU (proprietary drivers) and I swear that regarding pure rendering speed of windows composite KWin beats friggin' IceWM on my system!
So the actually informed statement about performance is "It depends."
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So in other words, it has higher system requirements for baseline performance than Gnome 2?
See, where Im from, thats generally called performing worse.
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You missed the point completely.
Seriously: You did.
Performance *is* decreased for many people, due to the dodgy state of Linux gfx drivers.
Not all GPU drivers for Linux are bad.
GNOME 3 is also bloody slow for those without top-notch graphics cards.
You should learn to read. My GPU is totally low end but the NVidia drivers are quite good these days.
Mine is an onboard Radeon 4200 and it crawls running GNOME3. GNOME2 was faster.
So install decent drivers. For many Radeon GPUs there are at least three completely different GPU drivers: Mesa-classig, Gallium3D-based, and Catalyst.
No idea which works best but if you experience bad performance with a Radeon HD 4200 which is many times more powerful than my old junk GPU then the only one to blame is yourself and your poor choice of
Re:Interesting, but (Score:5, Insightful)
And the 'performance' of having to move the mouse all over the screen, switch to a different overlay display, move the mouse all over the screen to click on an icon or take your hand off the mouse to type in the name of the application you start is not an improvement over Gnome 2.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Have you tried windows 8 yet? It's shocking bad,
Windows and Ubuntu seem to have gotten the idea that it's best to "give up", that users don't want a desktop environment, just a fancy app switcher. It's true in some cases, like with document editing, but it baffles me that the *software developers* designing Gnome somehow got the idea that one (full screen) window is all you need for a given task. It may be good for writers and people who just write e-mails (though even these people may need to have something elese open, like reference material). I'm afra
It's the apps (Score:4, Informative)
Many Gtk2 apps have been ported to Gtk3 -- Gedit, Shotwell, etc. Getting Gtk3 to run on a Gnome 2 desktop isn't as easy as it could have been.
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> Many Gtk2 apps have been ported to Gtk3
Now if gnome-panel and compiz and the old applets in the system trap could be ported everything would be great with GNOME3.
Re:It's the apps (Score:4, Informative)
Panel might be doable, but Compiz needs to be shot. Honestly, most of the problems I have with video and 3D playback on Linux are fixed by "turn off Compiz". I'm personally glad it's impossible to port it GNOME3, and I worry that Ubuntu is going to choke for basing so much of Unity on it.
I don't think I've ever gotten tear-free playback on Compiz with nVidia or ATI drivers. On Mutter it worked, first go, no screwing around with two different sync-to-vblank options that don't work, no wrong refresh rates. Just video playback on par with Windows or MacOS.
Re:Interesting, but (Score:4, Informative)
Aside from that it's a step back in usability on a laptop.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Why o why?! (Score:2, Interesting)
Why do people make a big deal about a distro's default desktop? You can install whatever you want.
Re:Why o why?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do people make a big deal about a distro's default desktop? You can install whatever you want.
Yeah, I could just 'apt-get install gnome-2' on the latest Ubuntu.
Oh, no. I can't, can I?
Most people just want a distro that doesn't suck out of the box.
Re:Why o why?! (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, I could just 'apt-get install gnome-2' on the latest Ubuntu.
Oh, no. I can't, can I?
I believe the problem is that the GNOME 3 libraries don't co-exist well with the GNOME 2 libraries. Given the way Linux handles libraries with versioning, I don't actually understand why this should be such a problem. But in the Linux Mint blog, they said that MATE (the fork of GNOME 2 that is in Linux Mint 12) has renamed all the GNOME 2 libraries so they can install side-by-side with the GNOME 3 libraries with no problem.
It's still early days with MATE. Once they get MATE really sorted out, then it will show up in Ubuntu (either officially or as PPA) .
steveha
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Re:Why o why?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Compiling a full Gnome 2 desktop from source is an exercise in masochism.
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It's considerably less fun than that.
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MGSE: why all this energy around new DE's? (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems to me that a combination of XFCE and KDE cover about 90% of the bases. XFCE if you want lightweight and minimal footprint, KDE if you want the power-user desktop with bells an whistles and customizable to hell and back.
Why is everyone re-inventing the boat, poorly? There *IS* a loss associated with having too many choices, no matter what some people will tell you. It fragments the market, fragments the resources spent on making each one solid, leads to end user confusion so people go back to the nice simple worlds of OSX or Windows where they don't have to think about such choices.
It's just a huge drawback and detriment to the Linux community to say, "Hey! You can pick from any one of these 68 different desktop environments - of course, every one of them is halfassed and has a crapton of problems because the community is split into tiny little fragments. But hey, you've got CHOICE! If you don't like one of the buggy 68 ones you picked, just pick another! It's all up to you!"
Re:MGSE: why all this energy around new DE's? (Score:4, Interesting)
Most of us used Gnome 2 because we didn't like KDE or XFCE. Now we don't like Gnome 3 either.
IMHO KDE is too bloated and clunky and XFCE is too cut down. Gnome 2 used to be just about right in the middle.
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Gnome 1 had potential. Gnome 2 should have been a warning though - it still might have been usable for a lot of people but the overbearing nanny attitude came through real clear in, for instance, how they not only removed the option for unix keybindings from the GUI, but actually went to the extent of deliberately sabotaging things at a deeper level so that it could not even be restored with gconf or the like.
Aside from briefly installing it, taking a look, laughing heartily, and then deleting the thing, I
Re:MGSE: why all this energy around new DE's? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is everyone re-inventing the boat, poorly?
Because its easy work and gives people lots of opportunities to argue about inconsequential stuff.
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And it's so much shinier than fixing bugs.
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Or maybe because humans are inventive animals. Things that do not work to our satisfaction we want to improve. That is why we have the phenomenon of progress.
This does not apply to everyone though, and if you are content to use what exists then you are perfectly within your rights to do so. I suspect/hope that would be a minority position on a site like slashdot which espouses tools, inventiveness and technology (although its promotion of simple consumption has increased greatly over the last few years, pro
The power of choice (Score:5, Insightful)
> There *IS* a loss associated with having too many choices, no matter what some people will tell you.
There is, balanced by benefits that outweigh the costs IMHO. Having multiple desktops and distributions means we can survive one going mad. Compare and contrast what is happening with GNOME3 and Unity with what is going on in the Windows and Mac worlds. When Win8 ships, those people have no choice, they get a tablet interface and it matters not if they like it or not. Eventually the Mac peeps know they get iOS and there ain't nothing they can do. On the other hand we told Fedora and Ubuntu to FOAD and picked something else. Most fedora users seem to be going with XFCE, Ubuntu users appear to be migrating in mass to Mint. Because we had a choice.
Imagine instead developers had listened to the siren song some people have been singing for a decade now, that GNOME and KDE had long since merged into one 'perfect' desktop, the small fry had folded up shop and got on board the One True Desktop. Then that One True Desktop caught tablet fever. Our options? All bad.
Right now we have multiple options in every major category of Free Software. Linus goes mad we adopt one of the BSD kernels. We have multiple web browsers, email clients, desktop environments, plumbing layers. About the only part that isn't redundant is X, no real options for that currently, but Wayland is under development.
'FOCUS'?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
'The Shell is designed in order to minimize distraction and interruption and to enable users to focus on the task at hand. A persistent window list or dock would interfere with this goal, serving as a constant temptation to switch focus.'
Jesus Christ, GNOME! You're not my boss and you're definitely not my wife. So, unless you're willing either to pay me or put out, kindly stop trying to tell me what to do.
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So, unless you're willing either to pay me or put out, kindly stop trying to tell me what to do.
Just fork your own version of GNOME then. Given the number of complainers about the direction GNOME is going, I'm surprised no slashdot stories covering GNOME forks have surfaced.
Re:'FOCUS'?!? (Score:5, Interesting)
So, unless you're willing either to pay me or put out, kindly stop trying to tell me what to do.
Just fork your own version of GNOME then. Given the number of complainers about the direction GNOME is going, I'm surprised no slashdot stories covering GNOME forks have surfaced.
Given the time and opportunity, I would. But if GNOME weren't so condescending in their approach, deciding on my behalf what constitutes a proper workflow, I wouldn't have to.
I do a lot of UI-related work, mostly in web interfaces and business automation. I spend a lot of time creating workspaces that are designed to reflect the needs of the people using them. What I look for in a desktop environment is one that provides me with the flexibility to reformat it to my precise needs for a particular role. GNOME used to be my desktop of choice for exactly this reason.
I don't particularly object to their desire for simplicity - it's one of the main reasons I've used GNOME since its inception. What I do object to, however, is their holier-than-thou decision not simply to hide some features, but to remove them entirely from the UI. To make matters worse, the folks at Canonical seem to have lost their way as well, creating something that's anathema to me: a unified, one size fits all window manager.
I do a lot of different things in the course of my work, from coding systems-level software to UI building and testing to report writing to graphics work (and web browsing and reading and email and...). I can only conclude that anyone who thinks they can provide me with a single, inflexible UI that is appropriate for all of these is not only wrong but willfully ignoring the error of their ways.
I'll be the first to admit that I'm very hard to please when it comes to my working environment. The closest I've ever come to actually liking my desktop UI was on GNOME 2 with Compiz. Now that the GNOME devs have not only turned their backs on what made GNOME good, but actually made it impossible to keep those things, I feel I have the right to bitch a little.
I'll be evaluating Mint in the weeks to come. If they fare well, I'll recommend we go to them when we move from Ubuntu 10.04.
Re:'FOCUS'?!? (Score:4, Informative)
There's already a fork, it's called Mate and it's included with Mint 12.
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Much of what I do every day at work requires frequent switches between windows.
Since we're talking about Linux Mint 12... (Score:5, Interesting)
Does anyone know why the default menus are so oddly organized - such as the catch-all "Other" sub-menu being in the middle of the menu, and containing important stuff like the Update Manager and Synaptic Package Manager?
Is this menu organization something Mint is inheriting from GNOME 3? In Mint 11 the system stuff was in some System menu where you more expect to find it.
I was expecting the menu to be cleaned up during the Mint 12 beta, but it's still there know in what appears to be the release version.
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I'm a Mint user, not a developer, so this is conjecture and uninformed opinion only --
The use of Synaptic is thought to be too hard for newbies to grasp, so other apps were developed, like the Mint Software Center, or whatever it's called and GDebi. These latter two are what the Mint team expect you to use, so the more comprehensive app is, while not hidden, not so easy to find.
If you use XFCE, you can make your own menu and put Synaptic at the top if you like.
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OK, well that kind of makes sense of why the important apps are hided away, but not of the awful placement of the "Other" menu. I assume the menu can be reconfigured if I really want to, but I'm a recent Ubuntu to mint convert and havn't bothered to look into it yet.
I tried the Mint Xfce rolling edition briefly, but there seems to be an annoying bug where the window manager dies (or can accidently be killed during normal use) leaving you with unmovable borderless windows... You can recover by lauching a new
What's wrong with Linux on the desktop: taste (Score:5, Funny)
If you have one visionary with great tech skills and average taste, you get an average desktop with hundreds of millions of users - Windows. If you have a visionary with average tech skills and great taste, you get a great desktop with tens of millions of users - Mac OS. If you have a hundred visionaries with great tech skills and varying tastes, you get a hundred different desktops with quality all over the map, each with dozens of users - Linux.
I like the enhancements... BUT (Score:4, Interesting)
I find this another symptom of "Free" software that's open in source becoming more and more closed in run-time.
Re:I like the enhancements... BUT (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this a misguided attempt to emulate the meteoric success of iOS and Android by just copying the Apple/Google/Microsoft corporate control over how users use the desktop?
Let me put it this way: when the Gnome team introduced marketing videos for the new Unity interface, the speakers wore black sweaters and talked with their hands while standing in front of stark white backgrounds. I am not making this up. They really and genuinely are trying to do everything like Apple.
Of course, I remember when early distros of Red Hat were pixel-for-pixel copies of the Win95 interface.
It's a damn shame. The "Blue Ocean Strategy" and the "Next Big Thing (Just Like Everyone Else)" has always been the staple of the tech industry. In manufacturing, you need to make your product stand out. With software, your product is just like familiar Windows/OSX... but better.
I'm not a hardcore geek, but I am a power user, and I can honestly say that Linux has been the biggest disappointment I've ever seen in the computer industry. Coming from an ex-Amiga user, that should mean a lot. It's either dumbed down or hardcore, with little in between. I try to like it and use it, but I just can't. Every distro I've tried over the last 10 years has let me down. The community just can't get its stuff together and venture into that large grey area.
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Secondary to the goal of consistency across installed instances during administration, is wide adoption. Wide use translates to credibility, when pitching contracts and negoriating deals.
You don't get wide adoption by pushing changes that users hate. There's a reason why so many people have switched to Mint lately.
Just one question (Score:2)
Can I add quick launchers to my bars? I want one-click launchers as a first level task. I don't use desktop icons, because 99% of the time there's something in front of them. I just want a handy way to launch a very commonly used application without digging into menus or typing the exact name into a search box. If you can be more productive than a single click to a fixed point on my monitor, I'm sold.
GNOME 3 knows best? (Score:5, Interesting)
This link just floored me.
https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design/FAQ#Why_no_window_list_or_dock.3F [gnome.org]
"A persistent window list or dock would interfere with this goal, serving as a constant temptation to switch focus."
Who wrote this? How did this become the official position of GNOME 3 officially?
On the one hand, I sort of respect that they aren't letting tradition shackle them. They are trying to boldly change things, to make something really new and really better.
On the other hand, they have changed a bunch of stuff and made it worse!
They got rid of some stuff that takes up space; and I always use GNOME on a giant desktop display with lots of room to spare. Even my netbook has a 10.1" screen and I don't begrudge a few pixels for a window list.
They got rid of the window list, it seems, because it is a distraction. But I am used to it being there and I don't notice it when I'm working; whereas with GNOME 3 I have no option but to have a distracting animation of windows flying about and arranging themselves any time I want to change apps. I have to hit the logo key, watch a dazzling display, find the window I want, click on it, and watch it zoom to full size. This is less distracting than clicking on the button for the window I want, and having it instantly be the topmost window? (Answer: no, it's more distracting, not less. At least that's true for me. But GNOME gives no option; this is the new One True Way that we must all use.)
If the GNOME 3 developers ever build a car, it won't have a steering wheel, a brake pedal, and a gas pedal. They will boldly re-engineer the driving experience. There will probably be a miniature replica of the car mounted on a joystick; you will twist the little car right to turn the real car right. So intuitive! Of course those of us with many years of experience, expert car drivers, will not be able to apply our experience; and if we are recommending a GNOME car to our friends, they will ask us "why is this different from every other car I have ever seen?"
The really frustrating part is that this is a total replay of what happened with the "object oriented file manager". Originally, the GNOME file manager worked pretty much the way it works now. Then they decided that this is overly complicated for newbies. There should be only one window for any one directory, and that one window should remember where it opened last and open in the same place, to build a sense of persistence and make the file system seem more like a real place. (This is similar to how the original Mac Finder worked, I believe. But the Finder in Mac OS X doesn't work that way anymore, and I believe didn't work that way when the GNOME guys made this decision.)
In true GNOME style, they didn't provide a convenient option to turn this off; why would you want to turn it off? It's better. And that is why I, and so many other people, first learned how to use gconftool, to find that option and turn it off.
The very next release of GNOME they changed the default back to the original behavior, and never changed it again. But for GNOME 3, they are sticking to their guns.
In some ways GNOME 3 is nice, but I bitterly resent the amount of control the GNOME guys are trying to assert over how I use my computer. I'm going to try Linux Mint 12 on a spare computer and see how I like it. From what I have seen, MGSE is a giant step up over either of Unity or GNOME 3 Shell.
One of the core goals of GNOME Shell is to provide the GNOME desktop with a consistent and identifiable visual identity.
Why isn't the core goal "make the user be happy and productive"? How does this "visual identity" thing help me? Why should I cooperate with this?
P.S. GNOME 2.x is my favorite desktop environment ever. The GNOME guys have really squandered all the good will I used to have toward them.
steveha
Re:GNOME 3 knows best? (Score:4, Insightful)
Also from that link:
The omission of a window list or dock also reduces the amount of screen space occupied by the Shell, and therefore makes it better suited to devices with smaller screens.
This ranks right up there with, "We need to remove scroll bars!" and "Maximize must go, just because!" Yeah, I don't suppose they've ever heard of hidden panels, hotkeys, or just giving people an option to put it back.
Really. Of all the communities to buy into the idea of removing things for our own good, it just has to be the open source community?
The world really has gone mad.
Re:GNOME 3 knows best? (Score:4, Informative)
If I didn't want to switch focus between tasks I wouldn't even bother a window manager on X at all (eg. can start with firefox only from knoppix).
Re: (Score:3)
When Gnome2 came out it was exactly the same, the best applets from Gnome1 were gone, the window manager had gone from the infinitely customisable Sawfish to bare bones Metacity, most configuration options were gone, 2.6 they brought in "spatial file manager" and told everyone to change the way they use directories to accommodate.
Slowly but surely, everything came flooding back and eventually it had reverted to a usable desktop that was actually better than 1.4. But make no doubt about it, every big decisio
Not working as a Virtualbox guest (Score:3)
Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I can't get gnome-shell to load in a Virtualbox VM. Got 3D accel enabled, got the 125MB of post-release updates applied, installed the latest Virtualbox guest additions, but if I try to load default Gnome it will load up the fallback mode that's like classic Gnome 2 but not.
MATE loads up OK, but I'm really more interested in the new hybrid interface.
Better disk encryption with Mint 12? (Score:3)
The main reason I just installed Debian/testing on my laptop was because the current release of Mint-Debian does not support root-on-lvm-on-crypt which is the setup I use for all of my home machines (since they are essentially single-user). I also found that the Ubuntu based Mint 11 does not support this either. I find this surprising as both of the distros Mint 11 was based on (Debian and Ubuntu) support this feature in their respective installers. I was rather disappointed that it was not available in the Mint 11 installer.
I know "Mint 12" is the Ubuntu based version and that the Debian based Mint 12 is not yet available, but does anybody know if Mint 12 supports this feature? I hope it does because Mint looks like a good fit for my laptop.
Re: (Score:3)
It does, but perhaps not for the reasons everyone imagines. Linux is great for breathing new life into older systems. For casual users, it can also be quite useful as long as it's set up correctly. Power users are power users; they'll figure out stuff.
Is it ready for the masses? I still don't think so.
Re:Does this matter anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, there's probably more people using Linux on the desktop now than there were people using computers 20 years ago. 1-2 percent is a LOT of people (millions). If I publish a piece of software and millions of people use it, I'd say it is successful. Who cares about what percentage of the entire market it is. In absolute terms, there is an assload of desktop users.
Re:Does this matter anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)
"I still have to ask the general public whether, desktop Linux still matters. Does it?"
The general public has no clue linux actually exists. But there remain a part of the population (0.1%) that never use anything else than linux. I do not recall when was the last time I used a windows machine for more than an hour. I think it was somewhere in 2006.
Most likely that part of the population read slashdot :)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The general public has no clue linux actually exists.
Whoa, hold on there! I'm sure if they own an Android or webOS device, they'll have heard of Linux at some point, no matter how small the reference may be.
Re:Does this matter anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, the desktop in general, Windows included, is rapidly becoming inconsequential other than for business use. The non-business computer market is rapidly moving to smartphones, tablets and laptops - all smaller screen devices where a traditional screen-real-estate-hungry user interface isn't the best option. This is the market that Ubuntu is obviously targeting with Unity, and Android and Windows also appear to be moving in the same direction - Windows 8 and Ice Cream Sandwich UIs both are geared towards small-screen appliance-type use.
But, that said, there's always going to be a demand for a more traditional general purpose compute devices, for development work if nothing else, and for that use Linux always has been a great option, and only getting better with age, even if the path it's taking is a little uncertain. RIP Ubuntu. Long live Linux Mint!
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Re:Does this matter anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is quite an interesting phenomenon to me. It seems like with the whole "cloud" business, we're going back to a client-server computing approach; the servers and clients are just a shit-ton more powerful than anything 20-30 years ago.
Don't worry, ten years from now everyone will remember that the thin-client model sucks and we'll be back to building powerful local systems again.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not so sure, and I wouldn't really characterize this as a move towards thin clients even if things are becoming more cloud-centric.
This is really about the computer market maturing and computers becoming consumer devices and converging on what the average consumer wants which is to consume (media and app content) and be entertained. The only folks who really want computers vs computer based appliances are hard code geeks and we're a tiny minority.
It's only a recent thing that you can pack enough technol
Re:Does this matter anyway? (Score:4, Insightful)
it's hard to see what would make people want to go back to clunky difficult to maintain desk-bound computers.
That's what they said about X terminals.
Sure, if all you do is look at web pages then a desktop is overkill. But as soon as you want to write a resume, you're fscked if all you have is a phone or a tablet.
Re: (Score:3)
But as soon as you want to write a resume, you're fscked if all you have is a phone or a tablet.
The "consumer" solution for this is not a full computer but a Bluetooth keyboard for one's existing phone or tablet.
Re:Does this matter anyway? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, it isn't. The only time I've ever seen tablets in the wild (very rare) have always been stand-alone. The most often case for people using their devices (at least in public) have been:
1. Laptop toting coffee shop junkies, almost 99% laptop based, and 50-60% lean back in posture (AKA, not real work)
( Once ever have I seen a tablet at a coffee shop, and it was a guy flashing up some pictures for sales/marketing it seemed. )
2. Cell Phones (all), for the ones that have user interfaces, I've recently seen a large number of people texting one another (IMHO not likely business), ~10% playing games?, and maybe 10% surfing for pages in some degree
3. E-paper devices - 99.999999% lean back
Of all examples cited, most people doing any sort of real work were the laptop toting junkies. Unless we move very far into the utopia of nobody needing to do real work, your argument seems flawed. The fact is that REAL work cannot and frankly is not done on the go.
Laptop rant: Our office has a policy of using laptops instead of desktops (who knows why?) and probably 20% of the coworkers that have and use laptops tote the beast between work and home (the rest don't even bother taking them home) and even then, the benefit of having a device on the go becomes pretty much irrelevant since its only used in fixed locations that could've been using cheaper equipment to begin with. Outside of the rugged road warriors who'll always be working from planes, trains, and automobiles, who needs portables (for work)?
Even netbooks have that much real estate (Score:3)
smartphones, tablets and laptops - all smaller screen devices where a traditional screen-real-estate-hungry user interface isn't the best option
I agree with you as for pocket-size devices such as phones and pocket tablets, and to a lesser extent for larger finger-driven capacitive tablets, but not so much for netbooks. The traditional desktop interface is designed for screens at least 9 inches diagonal VIS, like the old black-and-white Mac computers. Netbooks and larger tablets happen to have that much real estate.
This is the market that Ubuntu is obviously targeting with Unity
I agree with a few Unity design decisions, such as putting application launchers and the window list in an autohidden panel at the left,
Re:Even netbooks have that much real estate (Score:4, Informative)
[...] the inability to start a new instance of an application without plugging in an external 3-button mouse [...]
Sorry to latch on to only one part of your comment, but did you know that clicking both buttons on your mouse or touchpad will emulate button 3?
Discoverable? (Score:3)
Re:Discoverable? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Does this matter anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Does this matter anyway? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been running Ubuntu for a while and am starting to get tired of it, so I will express my opinion here in a rant that doesn't have much to do with the original post, except to exploit it for humor.
Free as in beer: True, but not much of a point if you have a job that pays at least minimum wage. I think I'd rather install Windows and have it work than try to figure out which of hundreds of distros and versions to use and getting one of them to actually work right on my system.
As in speech: Don't care. I'm a software engineer and I have better things to do when I get home than set up build environments and compile my major apps and OS components, much less actually try to understand the code and make changes to it.
Open: Also don't care, same reason.
Secure: Eh, not so much. Windows seems to be perfectly secure if you don't do stupid stuff like use IE (especially IE6), download every toolbar, screensaver, and smiley set known to man, and run attachments from random emails. And if you're doing that, you'll find some way to get your Linux install hacked too.
Stable and efficient: I'll believe that when somebody tells me why no kernel later than -33 will boot my system, file transfers mysteriously slow down to painful speeds, getting graphics to work right is pretty much a shot in the dark, getting multiple hard drives to work right is a ridiculous pain in the ass, audio mysteriously stutters at random, etc. Compared to all this, my Windows computers are easy.
Re: (Score:3)
Free as in beer: True, but not much of a point if you have a job that pays at least minimum wage. I think I'd rather install Windows and have it work than try to figure out which of hundreds of distros and versions to use and getting one of them to actually work right on my system.
Eh? Well, at minimum wage, coming up with $300 (one week's pay before taxes) to buy a new copy of Win7 will be quite a struggle, but I get that you are exaggerating for effect. Anyway, there are really only 3 major players in the desktop Linux space: Fedora, Mint, and Ubuntu. Although since you say you are running Ubuntu, I think you already know that. I haven't used Fedora for many years because every time I do there are serious bugs and stability issues. I just don't have the patience or time to deal with
Re:Does this matter anyway? (Score:4, Insightful)
A Fedora final release is a RHEL public beta, no more, and no less.
Re:Does this matter anyway? (Score:4, Interesting)
As for efficiency, maybe I should have worded that differently as I actually meant in terms of my work flow. This is going to be different for everyone but for what I do on a PC, GNU Linux allows me to get more done in less time. Having said that, on the same hardware (dual boot), general file and network operations amongst other things are definitely quicker than my Windows install.
I'm really not trying to do a 'my OS is better than your OS' although it probably does come across as that. The point I was originally trying to make is that different people have different requirements and preferences and we choose different tools for the job based on them. I really can't imagine myself being as productive using Windows than I am in Linux but I know many people who would have exactly the opposite experience.
Choice is good.
Re:Does this matter anyway? (Score:5, Funny)
Windows is much more stable baked and less buggy than Linux on a desktop. It is very sad but true due to alpha quality software. Windows stopped blue screening when XP came out and got rid of dos underneath that kept conflicting with win32 code. Windows 7 can stay up for years without a reboot now.
Re:Does this matter anyway? (Score:4, Interesting)
I still have to ask the general public whether, desktop Linux still matters. Does it?
Honestly? The only reason for a "visible" operating system is local storage, mostly of photos, and "edge case" applications that have not yet been implemented as web apps. As for which is best ... Windows can die in a fire, OS X is bouncy happy joyful brain-dead moonbeam cultware, and both Unity and Gnome 3 are headed straight for hell.
I want operating systems to just leave me alone. Stop annoying me. Stop moving my stuff without my permission. Stop demanding that I upgrade and reboot. Stop messing with the menu that I customized just because some designer says so. Stop breaking things that work, Ubuntu. LEAVE ME ALONE.
I spend almost all my time in a Web browser -- specifically, Chrome. Pretty much everything I do daily is already better on the Web.
I should be running ChromeOS. I can't bring myself to switch to a Chromebook, but not for rational reasons. If you believed the arguments people raise against the Chromebook, you'd think we all lived half our lifetimes in airplanes that don't have wi-fi. You know what I do when I get in an airplane? I put in my headphones and close my eyes.
Re:Does this matter anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)
web 2.0 can suck it until these snake oil 'cloud' asps and coders can ensure access and legal protections for users that prevent abuse. computers are great because they're empowering, but if the new model is to make me dependent on a hierarchy of trolls guarding various bridges, I'll abandon it as quickly as I took to it. if i'm to depend on a tool for livelihood, then I want it stored and executed locally.
City buses have no Wi-Fi (Score:2)
Stop demanding that I upgrade and reboot.
In some cases, if you do not upgrade and reboot, a recently discovered security hole in the kernel or a widely used library may result in your machine being compromised. What's the polite way to notify you of this? But I agree with much of what else you have to say, which is why I switched to Xubuntu for the 11.10 cycle.
If you believed the arguments people raise against the Chromebook, you'd think we all lived half our lifetimes in airplanes that don't have wi-fi
I don't fly, but I do live much of my life away from Wi-Fi coverage. Citilink buses in Fort Wayne, Indiana, have no Wi-Fi, and the APs in the shopping center where I wait for the next bus ar
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I think I started on Ubuntu with 8.04. There seem to be more and more bugs with every new release.