Linux Mint Forums

Nice Mint 13 article:
http://www.cio.com.au/article/413564/li ... =4&fpid=21

A version of the article is appearing everywhere evidenced by Twitter! Great PR by Clem ..... or whoever.

Does this mean that Mint 13 has two desktop, Cinnamon and MATE, but not any kind of Gnome 3?
Aren't these all build top of Gnome 3?

Good read - I think Mint 13 is gonna be a great release with the new Cinnamon shell on top of an Ubuntu LTS - the disenchanted masses will once again have a fully working Gnome desktop that is both familiar and customisable.

Lumikki wrote:Does this mean that Mint 13 has two desktop, Cinnamon and MATE, but not any kind of Gnome 3?
Aren't these all build top of Gnome 3?

Remember that there is a difference between Gnome 3 and Gnome Shell. The underlying system of Gnome 3 cannot be avoided, nor should it be. But various shells can be used such as Unity, Gnome Shell, Cinnamon, etc.

tdockery97 wrote:

Lumikki wrote:Does this mean that Mint 13 has two desktop, Cinnamon and MATE, but not any kind of Gnome 3?
Aren't these all build top of Gnome 3?

Remember that there is a difference between Gnome 3 and Gnome Shell. The underlying system of Gnome 3 cannot be avoided, nor should it be. But various shells can be used such as Unity, Gnome Shell, Cinnamon, etc.

And this is what has created the greatest confusion about Gnome 3 and the author of the referenced article also got it wrong:

Nor does the Linux Mint team want to continue to use Gnome 3...

Then he goes on about the new DE called "Cinnamon" as if it was a fork of Gnome 3 when it's actually a fork of gnome-shell (and mutter for that matter). Problem was that Gnome itself didn't explain the difference clearly enough when Gnome 3 was released. It was a whole different paradigm then the past versions of the Gnome DE. Gnome 3 is the underlying technology and it needs a shell to provide the GUI and their answer was gnome-shell. People looked at all those lovely images on Gnome.org and said,"This is Gnome 3" when it was actually gnome-shell. There was no obvious explanation as to the difference.

Gnome 3 itself is quite powerful and offers a lot of flexibility for DE developers. Ubuntu went the way of Unity for it's shell for Gnome 3 and Linux Mint is currently developing it's own shell called "Cinnamon". MATE is another GUI environment for Gnome 3 that is not so much a shell but follows the old Gnome 2 DE process of integrating the GUI with the underlying Gnome technology rather than being a shell which is layered over it.

Okay, so I'm yabbering here but It's just too bad that gnome-shell has become synonymous with Gnome 3 when it shouldn't be.

Yeah that misconception is so widespread it won't die out. I feel some Cinnamon users will look at you funny if you have bad manners enough to tell them they're running Gnome 3

"Nuh-uh!"

bimsebasse wrote:Yeah that misconception is so widespread it won't die out. I feel some Cinnamon users will look at you funny if you have bad manners enough to tell them they're running Gnome 3

"Nuh-uh!"

Oh bother! Now I'm going to have to go find another Mint user in my neck of the woods that uses Cinnamon just to tell them that.

Okey I'm trying to figure this out.

There is Gnome 3 (base) + Gnome 3 Shell. Now Cinnamon and Unity are DE shells top of Gnome 3 (base).
MGSE is DE extention to Gnome 3 shell. If I remove MGSE from Mint 12, I get Gnome 3 shell desktop?

What I haven't yet figure is, how MATE does fit this? How it's different?
Is MATE like DE + bridge between Gnome 3 (base) and Gnome 2 (base)?

DE: Gnome 3
Shells on top of it: Unity, Gnome Shell, Cinnamon (fork of Gnome Shell)
MGSE is just Gnome Shell with a few custom extensions enabled, it's not something separate from Gnome Shell.

In Gnome 2 the shell was called gnome-panel but there wasn't any shell competition to speak of like now so no one referred to it as such, there was just the Gnome 2 desktop.

MATE as far as I understand is a fork of Gnome 2s muscles, organs and skin to work on a Gnome 3 skeleton.

Now that's the first time I see someone associate MATE with Gnome 3.

You know, I'm getting the distinct impression that a lot of folks are confused about how MATE works--including me. I have put the question to the MATE's developer directly on the MATE forums for official confirmation and I'll post here when he replies. But I do believe what he'll say is that MATE does not need Gnome 3's underlying technology at all, rather that MATE is a stand alone DE much the same as KDE and LXDE are stand alone DEs that run on the Linux kernel and does not require any other DE to operate.

All this business about Gnome 3's underlying technology needing some sort of shell to provide a GUI (Unity, gnome-shell or Cinnamon) plus the fact that Linux Mint 12 included all 3 DEs plus Gnome 3's "Fallback" mode, has a lot of folks confused. Even those who've been working with Linux distros for awhile now. What should be obvious has now become a rather gray area that even has my old head befuddled. (Of course, that may be my natural state of mind these days )

Let's clear up the confusions

MATE is a fork of Gnome 2. That means, the code of Gnome 2 was taken and everywhere where it said "Gnome" it has been renamed to "MATE". Moving forward the MATE developers will be doing bugfixing and perhaps even adding new features. Mate is the continuation of Gnome 2, under a different name.

Gnome 2 and Gnome 3 can't actually be installed on the same Linux installation due to library conflicts. MATE has fixed that problem by making changes to its libraries, and so on the same Linux installation you can now have both MATE and Gnome 3 (with any of the shells on top). So at the login screen you can choose between running Gnome 3 or MATE. Somehow, this is getting mixed up to that MATE would be based on Gnome 3. It isn't. MATE = Gnome 2

xenopeek wrote:Let's clear up the confusions

MATE is a fork of Gnome 2. That means, the code of Gnome 2 was taken and everywhere where it said "Gnome" it has been renamed to "MATE". Moving forward the MATE developers will be doing bugfixing and perhaps even adding new features. Mate is the continuation of Gnome 2, under a different name.

Gnome 2 and Gnome 3 can't actually be installed on the same Linux installation due to library conflicts. MATE has fixed that problem by making changes to its libraries, and so on the same Linux installation you can now have both MATE and Gnome 3 (with any of the shells on top). So at the login screen you can choose between running Gnome 3 or MATE. Somehow, this is getting mixed up to that MATE would be based on Gnome 3. It isn't. MATE = Gnome 2

Thanks for clearing up the fog of confusion. I, for one, usually don't get caught out like that for something that should be rather obvious but it happened anyway. Now ask me if I feel foolish (no, don't)

Thank you Vincent.
I actually thought people were aware of that even since Mint 12 was released, that's why I was so surprised.

That Unity and Gnome Shell both operate under the gnome 3 desktop environment would explain why I had the identical problem of my mousepad randomly freezing. Firstly using Unity in Ubuntu 10.10, then the same problem using Gnome 3 in Mint 12. However, unlike Ubuntu, Mint gives you the choice of MATE which is essentially a clone of the good old reliable Gnome 2, designed to run side by side with Gnome 3. Mate has been a lifesaver for me and I appreciate that the Mint team, unlike the developers of Ubuntu and Gnome 3, realise that a huge base of users are most unhappy with the twin train wrecks of the contemporary Linux world, namely Unity and the new Gnome Shell.

In laymen's language, when no application is open, you are interacting with gnome-shell. When you are going to change system settings, you are interacting with gnome shell. When any program is running, it requires a GUI. Gnome provides this GUI using a toolkit known as GTK. Gnome 2 used GTK2+, Gnome 3 uses Gtk3+. Gnome also has their own set of default application which are designed to work with Gnome 3. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Gnome 2.32 was the most popular Linux Desktop Environment (DE).

Things were going all well, then something unexpected happened. UNITY was introduced to Desktop. Earlier it was only available for Netbooks. it did not offered customization of DE and was not accepted well. Then came another 'unholy mess' Gnome 3 (with gnome-shell).

New version did not offer customization. Critics said it was not optimized for desktop PC, but for touch screen devices. You could not have icons on desktop and cannot configure it the way you like.

When someone says Gnome3, people take it for granted that it is gnome3+gnome-shell.

According to some users, Gnome2 was very mature and there was no need to change it. So Gnome2 was forked into MATE. MATE uses GTK2+ like gnome 2 and tries to behave exactly as gnome2. To be able to install MATE, the lib were conflicting. As Vincent has said, MATE Dev Perberos (MATE dev)had to rename anything tagged 'gnome' to avoid conflict. So MATE is like a replacement for Gnome 2. It is a completely new DE.

To make Gnome3+gnome-shell usable, Clem created Mint Gnome Shell Extension (MGSE). These are just 3 extensions, that try to make Gnome3 more desktop friendly. But they were not enough and Gnome 3 devs were not interested in optimizing for desktop PC. So clem had to fork gnome-shell and create Cinnamon.

Like UNITY, Cinnamon runs on top of for in simple words along with Gnome3. comice OS also has forked Gnome-shell to suit their distro.

KDE 4.6 is also designed keeping in mind touch screens. So there was a drought in DE. people shifted to XFCE / LXDE or tried to adjust with Gnome-shell and KDE. In mean time, Cinnamon was developed and is highly appreciated by Linux Community in general.

Hope this helps.

EDIT: sorry for double posting. Deleted last post.

EDIT2: Gnome-shell links

http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell
http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/FAQ#Wh ... E_shell.3F