You can't deny that Mint 11 looks horribly dated now

[Nick_Djinn]

Unity looks like its trying to be a smartphone or tablet OS, and Gnome Shell looks like its trying to copy unity to stay relevant.

There was nothing wrong with gnome. If you think it looks boring, just install compiz, or use KDE!

[Nexus]

Unity looks like its trying to be a smartphone or tablet OS, and Gnome Shell looks like its trying to copy unity to stay relevant.

There was nothing wrong with gnome. If you think it looks boring, just install compiz, or use KDE!

Gnome Shell copying Unity? Erm. that's the other way around. Unity was made because the Ubuntu folks didn't like Gnome Shell.

[rhY]

The OP is high. Mint 11 is gorgeous. Extremely pleasant to myself and all of my user base. No complaints at all.

My ONLY complaint is that Banshee sucks. I immediately delete it for Audacious. And I have to turn off compiz, tell all my video files to defer to VLC, and change the wall paper.

Other than those small tweaks, the default install is brilliant.

I've been waiting for someone with your experience to ask this. When you say you turn off compiz, does that mean you totally disable it? Do you/can you also remove it without breaking anything? Not to pick your brain but the only real things I see it being needed for are 3d acceleration, opacity which I can give up, and screen flipping which I'm sure can be replaced by something else. The question is does removing it really benefit you in terms of ram/cpu usage, can you give a real world example? Thanks for taking the time to read this, I'm just curious today.

As for Banshee replacements, you might find Guayadeque to be rather charming, I would go with building from svn though if you really want to see it's feature set.

I gave Clementine a shot, still bloated and slow compared to Audacious. I just disable Compiz and stick with metacity. As to removing Compiz, I don't really see the point, my computer runs great and has plenty of memory just stock with Compiz disabled. Compiz made VLC stutter at 1080p. That's really the only reason I disabled it.

[Nick_Djinn]

Unity looks like its trying to be a smartphone or tablet OS, and Gnome Shell looks like its trying to copy unity to stay relevant.

There was nothing wrong with gnome. If you think it looks boring, just install compiz, or use KDE!

Gnome Shell copying Unity? Erm. that's the other way around. Unity was made because the Ubuntu folks didn't like Gnome Shell.

That makes sense.....Is that really the only reason though? Are you sure Gnome wasnt catering to Ubuntus announced plans when they started but before Unity was announced? Didnt they also depart from the X window environment entirely?

[AlbertP]

Gnome and Unity haven't yet dropped X, but we may get it replaced by Wayland in a couple of years.

[Nexus]

Unity looks like its trying to be a smartphone or tablet OS, and Gnome Shell looks like its trying to copy unity to stay relevant.

There was nothing wrong with gnome. If you think it looks boring, just install compiz, or use KDE!

Gnome Shell copying Unity? Erm. that's the other way around. Unity was made because the Ubuntu folks didn't like Gnome Shell.

That makes sense.....Is that really the only reason though? Are you sure Gnome wasnt catering to Ubuntus announced plans when they started but before Unity was announced? Didnt they also depart from the X window environment entirely?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_%28d ... evelopment

Basically it says that

Mark Shuttleworth cited philosophical differences with the GNOME team over the user experience to explain why Ubuntu would use Unity as the default desktop instead of GNOME Shell, beginning April 2011, with Ubuntu Natty Narwhal (11.04).

[AlbertP]

Shuttleworth's intention to replace X with Wayland in a couple of years, but at the moment X is still used for Unity.

[HorrorCode]

Shuttleworth's intention to replace X with Wayland in a couple of years, but at the moment X is still used for Unity.

I needed a better understanding of what that means and the wayland faq seems to be the best one I can find:

http://wayland.freedesktop.org/faq.html#heading_toc_j_4

[classic]

It looks the same as Mint 10, which was released half a year ago and the default look of this distro is starting to really look its age. I know that the team hates Unity and wants to move to Gnome 3, but Gnome 3 looks worse and has less functionality than Unity. Can the Mint team at least try to embrace Unity in the next release or at least do a Mint Unity theme?

Either way, you have another half a year to give this distro a jolt. I guess the rest of us that like Unity can install the vanilla Ubuntu with the Mint extras from the Katya repository until then.

Don't like what you're watching? Change the freaking channel. Linux mint ROCKS.

[AlbertP]

LM 12 will probably include a newer desktop. Anyway, I'm OK with Mint 11 though I often like to run KDE Plasma Desktop. (I'm still looking for a way to get KDE's widgets, especially the weather, on a Gnome desktop).

[fbest]

Looks like we are having a debate on the freedom of choice.Been using Linux Mint since 7 "Gloria" I am currently am using Mint 10 and I am quite happy with the way I have customized the desk top.
Speaking for myself, the look and feel of the desk top is not dated. For a desk top!

I tried Fedora 15 with the Gnome 3 shell and thought that it would be great for a smart phone or a net book. All those wonderful icons floating all over the place. That's just way too much clutter for a 19" monitor. Cairo dock and mint menu what more does a guy need?

My choice is for a functional stable desktop that has Mint Menu and the appearance of Gnome 2.
I understand that Gnome 3 is the future but, at least give me the choice as to what my desk top is going to look like. Don't force the Gnome 3 shell on users who are happy campers with out giving us the ability to set it up to suit our needs.

[mazzy]

My first linux distro was Red Hat 7.3 way back when so while I haven't seen everything I have watched the desktop evolve for a while. I'm running a perfectly stable Ubuntu 10.10 right now but I certainly won't be switching to Unity or Gnome 3 yet. I use my PC professionally and both of these desktops are missing the mark for people like me. I have not yet tried Mint because at the moment, my system is perfectly stable and I'm happy and productive with it, but Ubuntu has closed its doors to me as has Fedora because of their environment changes, thus I will be moving to Mint if the maintainers decide to stick with gnome 2 for the time being.

I have little to no doubt that one day I will be using Gnome 3 or Unity one day soon but Gnome 3 was a complete rewrite and Unity a relatively new project - neither of these desktops had me or people like me in mind when they were designed. Improvements for power users will come I'm almost certain but we have not been the priority for these projects thus far (which is odd as its the power user is catered to most often in the Linux world).

Any way keep up the good work maintainers and don't listen to distro hoppers who just want the bleeding transparent edges that are Gnome 3 and Unity.

[Nick_Djinn]

I actually dont think that catering to power users fits the theme of Ubuntu, or Mint for that matter....With Fedora its a bit of a surprise though.

Still, Im not a big fan of my desktop looking like a glorified cellphone.

Ubuntu might take the tablet market, but ONLY if they package it with Medibuntu or proprietary codecs.

[ghostdawg]

I recently installed LMDE and it's pretty good. So far I'm satisfied with it. Only thing I don't like, but it's minor, is the green theme. I guess it has to do with the name being Mint! I had the same issue with Suse green theme by default.

Besides the default theme, Mint rocks!!!

[Habitual]

just for the record, "I deny"

[AlbertP]

I don't deny, but there is not yet a better desktop available (outside of KDE4).

[kvv]

I have little to no doubt that one day I will be using Gnome 3 or Unity one day soon but Gnome 3 was a complete rewrite and Unity a relatively new project - neither of these desktops had me or people like me in mind when they were designed. Improvements for power users will come I'm almost certain but we have not been the priority for these projects thus far (which is odd as its the power user is catered to most often in the Linux world).

Any way keep up the good work maintainers and don't listen to distro hoppers who just want the bleeding transparent edges that are Gnome 3 and Unity.

I can see where you come from. I am a bit of a distrohopper. I am running Fedora 15 with gnome3 fallback mode and metacity window manager (I hate compiz, unity gnomeshell and you need to get out of my lawn ), and mint 9 lts gnome. With gnome-tweak-tool, you can make your desktop almost exactly like gnome2 with improved panel design. The code that is running is still buggy, but I have no doubt that by december most of the bugs will be fixed. Even right now, I see the bugs disappear with updates 2 to 3 times a week. I am also pretty sure the Clem won't include it if it has very obvious bugs.

Most (if not all) of the default applets are already there. Maintainers of popular applets and themes will most likely port theirs to gtk3.

Cheers!

[Nick_Djinn]

Isnt it going to be heavier and slower to get back to the gnome2 look from gnomeshell or unity?

[linuxfanatik]

Hm! I don't know where you are seeing this 'dated' appearance, Katya hasn't been out all that long. I myself prefer Julia - but that's my choice. When Mint goes to Gnome 3 like every other Gnome Desktop Distro will, because the Gnome People are actually phasing out all previous editions entirely in preference for this new model anyway, I too applaud that decision as innovation and invention must move forward - just as Linuxmint must. I disagree that Unity is something to look forward to, as Its not even half-finished as a desktop feature and reminds me more of Microcrap when they brought out Vista - and what a flop that turned out to be - eight years to correct the mistakes of a wayward system! I think that Gnome 3 is the way to go as everything is where you want it to be - without hunting around in far-flung places for utilities that are hidden behind codecs and de-muxers . Presentation is the key - just as the metalic look of Julia showed itself in its beautiful KDE version of Linuxmint - thanks to Jamie Birse!

[Nick_Djinn]

Unity is a tablet app that they are testing on their desktop population in order to find a niche. Its both inconsiderate to their base and a huge gamble.

I prefer Gnome Shell, but I like Gnome 2 with Compiz better.

What I would really like is Gnome panel, Nautilus, E17 Window Manager, and otherwise Gnome base.....PCLOS did that only with Dolphin and KDE's panel. 32bit only means I refuse to use it on my desktop or laptop.

Im really not sold on either of them. I got plenty of eye candy before because I knew how and had the specs for it......Oh well. If I had to choose, Id go with Gnome 3.


Wayward (?) does interest me, but I think its crap that they decided to roll it out as an experiment as the main distro. Very inconsiderate. This should be the side project, not the main base that everyone has to scramble to fix compatibility with.