Poll: Desktop environments

[windsphere]

After using both Cinnamon and Mate I choose Mate. It is the most like the old gnome II and is easy and quick to use. It has also a Caja terminal and is a fork of nautilus terminal, which I like very much. It also has all the same bars and add-ons. Mate also has the Mint search for your program in the menu. This will be the one Linux Mint I will be installing for all those transitioners and timers (old and feeble users who just want it to work). Love Mint and a big thanks to the Mint crew.

[mint-me]

Cinnamon here working fairly stable. In Mint 12 I used Gnome Shell, and Cinnamon works similarly in Mint 13, and even faster for me. Only complaint, is I really miss the Favorite Menu items appearing on left of screen when using "hotspot", it would save a click each time I launch an app. Is anyone thinking of making an extension for this?

[BBOSAK2143]

As I listed on my first post on another topic in this forum, I absolutely love the Cinammon desktop. Unfortunately, I am unable to use the KDE desktop due to a glitch with my video drivers and KDE. Still as I have seen KDE is alright, but prefer the CInammon desktop. I love having the YLMF 4.0 look to this entire situation. Loved their system's looks, but unfortunately command lines don't work. Also 4.0 can not upgrade(or next to impossible) to 3.0.2 so is now a dinosaur, before anyone realized it actually existed! As these Chinese OS developers struggle to get YLMF 5.0 past its beta stage to a realease, there is the chance it will also turn dinosaur quickly, especially when Mint has had great success with this kernel 3.2! Their packaging idea has great potential and would be great to be implemented on our side. There's problems with repositories on our side and I just want to add this suggestion. When choosing a higher functioning program is best to get from the developers that have specifically designed it for your architecture! Remember we are all human and make mistakes! Was my first mistake on "Maya" was to select Virtualbox thru software manager. Version that installed malfunctioned so had to reinstall thru Oracles site. The reprocussions are as stated above, no more KDE desktop! As I am still young to Linux systems(2months) I am not a pro to fix the problem! Not that I regret it, since I like this type desktop! Just figured would share a little beware on the software manager. Small programs are generally not a problem, is just the more complicated ones like Virtualbox, Wine and Video drivers for motherboard combo type! Since I have read a lot of documentation on this, I have come to believe sometimes the source of the program is the best place to go for it!

[Penurious Penguin]

Aside from the bugs, Mate is a huge relief after losing Gnome2 to Unity/Gnome3 and I was thrilled to discover it. Cinnamon is also quite impressive but could use a few options to tone it down a bit, and a few more options in general. Yes, I found it a little shy of options, but impressive overall. The panel would be my primary complaint, with it's wandering minimized windows lurching out to invisible infinity. I could think of more, but developers for both Cinnamon and Mate have a lot of appreciation from a lot of users and spared millions from the wrath of narcissistic rubbish. I still have to put in a kind word for xfce though, it really is close to being quite good. When I'm up for a new learning curve, I think I'll explore Awesome; I've heard great things about it from very serious users.

Ubuntu's recent choices kind of remind me of being kicked out of my comfortable home when I was younger. It forced me into the real world and helped me discover other things, amongst them Arch and Mint.

[LMDEFan1]

For all the KDE fans out there, you'll be glad to know that a recent poll, taken by LinuxQuestions.org, shows that KDE is the most popular desktop with 33% of the vote. GNOME came in second with 19.14%.

Here's the link:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions ... ar-919888/

I suspect that with GNOME's apparent direction toward tablet and phone computing that there will be more desktop and laptop users running to KDE (or back to KDE).

Remember, once upon a time KDE was the king but they lost out to GNOME when they made huge changes and had a horrible release (version 4). However, by version 4.2 it was stable again, although some will argue that 4.5 was really buggy. About that time GNOME 2 was really solid, very configurable and fast. People gave it a try and decided they liked it.

Now that GNOME is no longer listening to it's users, and has stuck with the direction taken with GNOME 3 (which as of version 3.4 still is not winning many fans) I suspect the Linux community will run to KDE. I'm guessing that a few will try Xfce but will find it a bit bare boned to keep there attention for daily use. Then they'll head for KDE. After all, KDE is the Kool Desktop Environment and definitely is configurable and beautiful AND fast (go on, admit it. KDE 4.8 is fast.).

Anyway, with all the negative comments toward KDE in the KDE forum (Re: Mint KDE 13 Release ?), I thought I'd inject this bit of information, along with my opinion, of course.

It's also interesting to read Linus Torvalds' thoughts on GNOME 3. Just google it. Pretty entertaining stuff. By the way, Linus used to be a huge proponent of KDE. I suspect he will be again sometime soon once he's done giving Xfce a try.

As for MATE and Cinnamon, they are looking good but, I'm planning to wait and try them again when they are more mature and stable. For now, I'm off to KDE land when Linux Mint 13 KDE is released. After all, if you're looking for a highly configurable modern looking DE, that takes advantage of today's graphics capable hardware, then KDE is definitely the way to go. AND, for those with older, less capable machines, who like to get as much life out of them as possible, just tweak your configuration. Just google "making kde faster" and you'll get lots of guidance.

[rickm1945]

I'm using LM13 Maya on my desktop, but I'm planing on using LM13 Cinnamon on my laptop, provided the B43 firmware/driver problem is solved. I do hope it canbe corrected on the live dvd, since I can not boot the install.

[AlbertP]

@ rickm1945: You can (in grub) add b43.blacklist=yes boot parameter, then boot Mint and install the driver you need for your wifi.

[DMGrier]

Running Maya with Cinnamon, was running Ubuntu 12.04 for about two months and even though I like Unity I felt like there was something missing. I kept seeing things about cinnamon on the internet and figure I would give it a try and I am in love.

I like mate but time to let gnome 2 die in my opinion. Plus I highly doubt KDE is the most popular, really like KDE but I do know they are not the most popular.

[AAAAH!ERMAGAWD!HELP!]

It's a pitty MATE isn't the top ranking one. But it easily could be; it can look better and performs better.

[Arran]

For now, I'm off to KDE land when Linux Mint 13 KDE is released. After all, if you're looking for a highly configurable modern looking DE, that takes advantage of today's graphics capable hardware, then KDE is definitely the way to go. AND, for those with older, less capable machines, who like to get as much life out of them as possible, just tweak your configuration. Just google "making kde faster" and you'll get lots of guidance.

Unfortunately your wish will not become reality. Clem seems to be an ardent opponent to KDE and he has probably deleted this word out of his brain. As a working System I am still on Mint12 KDE with a few additional source to get some of the most important updates as soon as they become stable from their developpers, not when the snail-sources here are offering them. I am also trying to impose KDE over LMDE and once successful, I will remove (purge) everything mate- and cinnamonish. As you rightly write, KDE is the most used DT on Planet Linux and it is a pity one of the most-used Distro is not offering this desktop.

[BostonPeng]

I am also trying to impose KDE over LMDE and once successful, I will remove (purge) everything mate- and cinnamonish.

Having gone down that rabbit hole I'm afraid you won't be able to purge every non-KDE package from LMDE. Since LMDE is built upon MATE/Cinnamon you'll find that trying to remove some packages will trigger removing a lot of mission critical apps as well. What I ended up doing is to open up Synaptic and went through packages one at a time, marking one for removal and making sure it won't trigger a massive package dump. Rinse and repeat. There is much you can kill, but you won't be able to end up with a pure KDE install of LMDE.

As you rightly write, KDE is the most used DT on Planet Linux and it is a pity one of the most-used Distro is not offering this desktop.

+1. Million. I'm curious to know what clem has against KDE. It seems more folks look to use KDE with every release, for whatever reason, and it truly is a shame that with yet another distro we've become the blue-headed stepchild, the weird cousin the rest of the family seems to wish they could forget about. The one problem with that is we're seeing how great Mint could be with KDE and we're becoming rather vocal. Yet again.

@clem:
Care to shed some light on your dislike of KDE? I look forward to being proven wrong about being the weird cousin. I'm just sayin'.

[Fandangio]

With regard to the last two posts I really thought that Mints partnership with Blue Systems http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1913 would lead to a more timely KDE release.

How very wrong I was.

[xenopeek]

Please don't spread FUD guys KDE is an important desktop for Linux Mint. As Clem has shared on the blog, Linux Mint 13 KDE (and Xfce) is currently in development. The team can't do everything at the same time, so please grant a little patience.

Though I can understand your disappointment about there not being a LMDE KDE release.

Linux Mint main edition, like Ubuntu, generally only gets security updates and critical bugfixes. Meaning you don't get the latest releases of applications with new features, but you do have a stable and fully integration tested system. While you may want the latest releases of applications for the new features those bring, average users benefit more from having a stable system. If you want the latest versions regardless of that, you can usually find those through PPAs or you can switch to a rolling release like LMDE (where you generally get these versions earlier).

[Fandangio]

Mine was not intended as such, apologies if it was misconstrued.

[BostonPeng]

You and me both, Fandangio. I'm hoping clem reports that it's still happening, just slower that we hoped. With Mint 13 KDE hopefully being built now it may simply mean things are just taking longer to pull things together. Netrunner has some nice KDE packages, I believe built on a Debian base rather than on Kubuntu, which should make building an official LMDE KDE release a bit easier. But I may be reading things incorrectly.

@ Vincent Vermeulen:
I didn't mean to post FUD either, simply stating that it seems KDE keeps getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop.

[Skara Brae]

New Linux Mint user here. Being rather "conservative" that I am (and not precisely knowing the difference between the two), I went for Mate.

[AAAAH!ERMAGAWD!HELP!]

New Linux Mint user here. Being rather "conservative" that I am (and not precisely knowing the difference between the two), I went for Mate.

I love mate!!!

[davidwillis]

I really want to like cinnamon. I think it has great potential, and in a year or so, it will probably be the best. But right now I think KDE is the by far the most complete, and ready for Desktop use. I am not sure why Mint does not make it there main desktop until cinnamon is ready to surpass it. The only thing I don't like about kde is the menu. I really love the new menu in cinnamon, if that could be added to KDE, then I would be happy. Even LXDE, or xfce could be made to be a very nice Desktop with compiz, and emerald themes (which is incompatible with cinnamon).

Anyway, that is my opinion right now.

[bjza]

Renewed LMDE user here. When school let out, I decided to give Gnome Shell a fair try. Unity had me furiously uninstalling within the hour, so I did not expect to like it at all. A few days ago I sabotaged X and fglrx while switching to testing, and in the process of repairing that mess I had to fall back to the classic Gnome environment. I was surprised to find I'd grown accustomed to the shell already. Once I'd set up personal keyboard shortcuts, I fell right into the habit of using them and the activities overview. There are still a lot of things I wish it could do, but it's working for me. I do wish some extensions would migrate into the shell proper (like the tweak tool, removing accessibility), since their existing outside the shell could lead to incompatibility on update.

[Skara Brae]

New Linux Mint user here. Being rather "conservative" that I am (and not precisely knowing the difference between the two), I went for Mate.

I love mate!!!

I think I'll be getting there soon

I have used Ubuntu w/ Gnome 2 from October 2007 until now, June 2012 (never had any big problems with it; that is how GNU/Linux should be), so I can only compare Linux Mint (Mate) with Ubuntu. I will not bring up my not-so-successful expeditions in SuSE and Mandrake in the '90/'00s. And the Mate start menu clearly works faster/smoother than Gnome 2 on this old but faithful computer of mine.

A pity that I "lost" Ubuntu, but then again, Ubuntu 10.04 will stop being supported in only 10 months, so that doesn't matter (but it's still a pity). I don't like Unity/Gnome 3, so upgrading Ubuntu will/would be a no-go for me (really not). "Mate" works very well (so far). I don't see a reason to get Cinnamon.

Oh, and Linux Mint makes me smile The LM Devs have done a wonderful job! They can feel good about themselves