MATE, in all her gnome2 glory
Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 2:34 pm
I like other in this past year have been put off by many of the changes in linux desktop enviroments, and while I wont knock kde4, which has somewhat stalwart during all this, I always found kde a little confusing and hungry for my tastes. that said I have searching for alternatives to what used to be gnome 2.
Normally I'm somewhat who loves the lastest and greatest, so as soon as i heard about gnome 3 I had to install fedora 15 to try it out. though better then unity, needless say that I wanted to like it I really did but I could never get used to it, even when mint 12 came with the mgse extensions which made things much better I was still left wanting
Unity was an even worse experience, I had using ubuntu since 10,04, the first linux distro Installed maybe a week or so after release. to this day I still can't use it, my experience with 11.04 made m wonna put my laptop through a wall. 11.04 was filled with regressions and nightmare of a desktop.
so then after my fustration with both I used debian with xfce for a time, and I still use xubuntu on another pc. xfce is an excellent desktop, precisely what it's billed to do, that means allot in my mind.
then last night I decided to give mate a fair shot
I installed the newest lmde iso with mate as the defualt, then i chnaged it to a more old school gnome2 configuration, and wow, I mised the old menu bar, it also seems lighter on my system then gnome2 did as well. it was like comming home, the classic dual panel setup is a productivity dream, allowing me to access and flip through applications quickly showing me what i need to see, and tucking away what isnt as important in a way that i can easily find it.
to those who who say that mate is clinging to the past i say this, its something my grandfather told when me an him were fixing up an old car " if ain't broke don't fix it" and thats exactly what has happened, someone tried to fix something that wasn't broke
Normally I'm somewhat who loves the lastest and greatest, so as soon as i heard about gnome 3 I had to install fedora 15 to try it out. though better then unity, needless say that I wanted to like it I really did but I could never get used to it, even when mint 12 came with the mgse extensions which made things much better I was still left wanting
Unity was an even worse experience, I had using ubuntu since 10,04, the first linux distro Installed maybe a week or so after release. to this day I still can't use it, my experience with 11.04 made m wonna put my laptop through a wall. 11.04 was filled with regressions and nightmare of a desktop.
so then after my fustration with both I used debian with xfce for a time, and I still use xubuntu on another pc. xfce is an excellent desktop, precisely what it's billed to do, that means allot in my mind.
then last night I decided to give mate a fair shot
I installed the newest lmde iso with mate as the defualt, then i chnaged it to a more old school gnome2 configuration, and wow, I mised the old menu bar, it also seems lighter on my system then gnome2 did as well. it was like comming home, the classic dual panel setup is a productivity dream, allowing me to access and flip through applications quickly showing me what i need to see, and tucking away what isnt as important in a way that i can easily find it.
to those who who say that mate is clinging to the past i say this, its something my grandfather told when me an him were fixing up an old car " if ain't broke don't fix it" and thats exactly what has happened, someone tried to fix something that wasn't broke