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It definitely looks simpler but... I think the fact that Gnome 3 (Cinnamon) is getting all the new features and things so Gnome 2 (MATE) is being left behind a bit like say Windows XP is resulting in (to my eyes) MATE looking quite old now. However, XFCE is still actively maintained and modern - albeit lightweight - and so looks beautifully modern to me.

Don't get me wrong, I think they all look very nice (personally my favourite is Cinnamon, but I heard it is a bit buggy still and this laptop isn't really up to running it) but I thought this might be a constructive and interesting point to make.

I am not bashing MATE - not at all, I love Mint and all its versions - but from the angle of constructive conversation and constructive criticism I wanted to make this point

Cheers dudes,

Hoppi! ^^

Perception and expectations are in the eyes of the beholder, or is that beauty?

MATE has a dedicated team of developers and maintainers (http://mate-desktop.org/team/). I think their focus still is on completing the fork and fixing Gnome 2 bugs, as you can see below. I'd expect with each release going forward they will have more time to start adding the nice-to-haves

Changes in 1.4:

- Numerous bug fixes
- mate-keyring and libmatekeyring backends updated and now integrate properly
- caja-dropbox package now available
- New themes added to mate-notification-daemon
- Removed indicator-applet-session
- File sharing now available via bluetooth
- Added option to use fast alt-tabbing when compositing is enabled in marco
- mate-icon-theme-faenza now available
- mate-character-map now available
- mate-screensaver now supports GDM user switching
- Removed nyancat from the mate-desktop about dialog
- Forked libwnck (now libmatewnck)

Caja improvements:
- Restored toggle button for text based location bar
- Bookmarks can now be opened in the places side pane via the enter and space keys- - - Added a button to get the difference between files in the file conflict dialog

xenopeek wrote:MATE has a dedicated team of developers and maintainers (http://mate-desktop.org/team/). I think their focus still is on completing the fork and fixing Gnome 2 bugs, as you can see below. I'd expect with each release going forward they will have more time to start adding the nice-to-haves

(changes here)

Yeah, I guess they are v v busy

I suppose an end user like me sees these tiny teeny little things that might not be 100% perfect and doesn't fully appreciate all the good things and where the work has been put in!

I think for me though if I were to make a few little tweaks I'd give the Menu button a hover effect, change the cog to the Mint logo, remove the border and things around the Show Desktop button so it blended cleanly.. I think that would make the bottom left look beautiful and more modern! I also felt the Mint Menu background looked a little too much like older Mac systems, but I'm sure my low screen resolution didn't help its aesthetics!

I'm glad they're still working on it though as I think it's a good, solid desktop, but I think Cinnamon is just amazing and up there with Win 7 and OSX in terms of usability, good design and eye-candy. I much prefer it to Ubuntu's Unity desktop as it's sleeker with a more precise design IMO.

I've heard that Cinnamon is prone to crashes though? Or maybe it's just on some hardware I dunno. Man I can't wait for it to be perfect ^_^

Thanks for listening to my ramblings anyway and thanks for the posts!

Mint rocks! ^_^

Cinnamon had a bug that caused freezes on some systems and applications, and was very hard find and fix. This has been solved a few weeks back and is available as an update to all users since end of July. (http://forum.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.ph ... 00#p611914)

Clem also touches a bit on what's next with Linux Mint in his blog post on the Monthly Stats July 2012, the "News and summary" section at the end: http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2097. The things you mention, like changes to the menu, are within the scope of the Linux Mint developers as they add the Mint Menu to the Linux Mint MATE edition and don't use the standard MATE Menu.

xenopeek wrote:Cinnamon had a bug that caused freezes on some systems and applications, and was very hard find and fix. This has been solved a few weeks back and is available as an update to all users since end of July. (http://forum.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.ph ... 00#p611914)

Clem also touches a bit on what's next with Linux Mint in his blog post on the Monthly Stats July 2012, the "News and summary" section at the end: http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2097. The things you mention, like changes to the menu, are within the scope of the Linux Mint developers as they add the Mint Menu to the Linux Mint MATE edition and don't use the standard MATE Menu.

Awesome stuff! And so glad to hear about that Cinnamon fix!

I never thought I'd say this about a distro of Linux but I actually have faith that you'll do the right things for the OS!! With most others like Ubuntu, I'm waiting for the next time they shoot themselves in the foot xD

With Mint... you're doin' great! ^_^

I don't think it looks more modern, and by that I probably expect to see popular looks/styles (eg. Apple OSX windows OS various newer versions and of course Linux main desktop styles Kde or Gnome followed by other types lxde, xfce and distributor/developer choices.
http://internalcomputer.com/comparison- ... u.computer


I personally don't really like Xfce centered panel option or even Gnomes' on the Top of screen as a default choice
--they can all be changed within the confines of their style, unlike fixed choices (Apple/windows ), or completely tossed for your own preference or customized build..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compariso ... vironments

Honestly, I think its a matter of opinion, and also how its configured (a good theme vs the default theme). If you go by default Mint 13 Xfce vs. MATE, IMO they look basically identical besides the menu (and that can be changed). Both Xfce and MATE can be configured to look very modern (and this goes for almost any DE). Personally, I'd use Xfce over MATE, but that's not because of looks (Xfce is a little bit lighter than MATE).