god awful new interface

[m spellman]

Just upgraded and ended up with a horrible,ugly,non intuitive crappy interface like the new one from Ubuntu.

Can ya tell what I think about it. Loved this distro until now.

So how do I get the old interface back. The one that was in place before the "New Look" boy am I tired of that phrase. Especially from Google.

Any help would be appreciated. I am not all that technically savvy with Linux.

[CapitalG]

[Inkit]

I don't think that you can get the old look back. Even MATE which is a fork of gnome 2 looks similar to the new gnome 3 interface. I use xfce now so I'm not sure if you can tweak the look to get the classic gnome 2 look you want, but you can try.

[CapitalG]

mate looks a lot like gnome2.

[bimsebasse]

Pro-tip: while asking for help it's best not to use words like crappy and godawful

[nomko]

..........horrible,ugly,non intuitive crappy..........

Shouting and swearing won't help you further!!!

First of all: which version your using? Between the swearing and cursing i think i can figure out that you're using Mint 12?? Mint 12 comes with Mate, Gnome3, Gnome classic. When you log in, there's a sort of gearing wheel. Press that and you see which desktop environments you can choose.

Secondly: there's no way you can stop progress. Gnome2 is dead, long live Gnome3.

Third of all, if you don't like Mate/Cinnamon/Gnome3, take a look at Xubuntu or Mint KDE or Mint LXDE.

Swearing, shouting and cursing won't help you.

[monkeyboy]

[quote="m spellman"]Just upgraded and ended up with a horrible,ugly,non intuitive crappy interface like the new one from Ubuntu.

Welcome to the brave new world.

Can ya tell what I think about it. Loved this distro until now.

Mint is still Mint, its just a hat change that is a problem. So fear not most everyone is getting through it.

So how do I get the old interface back. The one that was in place before the "New Look" boy am I tired of that phrase. Especially from Google.

Folks have already suggested alternative desktops to you so I might as well suggest yet another. XFCE, is not the old Gnome 2 but it is similar enough to have a fairly short learning curve and it is mature enough to be fairly stable for the moment. In fact there is a new LMDE release candidate with XFCE that looks rather tasty.

Any help would be appreciated. I am not all that technically savvy with Linux.

Its all good, all the folks here were new to Linux at some point and most are now getting along. Good Luck

[altair4]

Your anger and obvious frustration is understandable yet misdirected. Gnome3 changed the rules at many different levels from reduced function to a new paradigm. Ubuntu's Unity is one response to bring order to the chaos and Mint's Cinnamon is another but both are attempts to work within Gnome3.

XFCE as mentioned above is one alternative to all this.

[CapitalG]

Pro-tip: while asking for help it's best not to use words like crappy and godawful

[m spellman]

To those who think my post was "shouting and swearing"

I thought shouting was like this"SHOUTING" which I do not see in my post.

The swearing thing has me completely lost. The only thing I can determine that might have been taken as close was the work Crappy.

Crappy was derived from a mans name,"John Crapper " the inventor or first marketer of the flush toilet.

If I have offended anyone's sensitivities my apologies.

To those of you who took the post for what it was and offered constructive answers I thank you.

I do not agree that newer,or just like the other or "me too" is always better.

I also do not agree with "politically correct" obviously. If I think somethings stinks I say so.

Again thanks for the info.

I just liked Linux Debian as it was because it was intuitive,easy to use and fast on old hardware.

I have a some of the other desktops mentioned and did not really care for them but I guess I will revisit them or stick with the Gnome Classic until that get upgraded away.

Peace and Joy to all.

[KBD47]

Have you tried logging into MATE? It's just Gnome 2 with a new name.

[laofzu]

You can give SolusOS a try, it still uses the old Gnome 2 desktop. Don't know about the future, but for the moment it works fine until Cinnamon and Mate mature more. Will have to see what happens when Wheezy becomes the new Debian stable.

[CapitalG]

i thought gnome 2 was gonna stay around longer on mint? for people who wanted to keep it.

[DrHu]

The swearing thing has me completely lost. The only thing I can determine that might have been taken as close was the work Crappy

Basically it is insulting and not being civil
--any technical or weasel wording to misdirect didn't help any

Your handle is m spellman and I guess I thought you might have been interested in using quality English during any dialogs or communications on these forums..
--could be that spellman is just a name not an attribute..

Hope someone can help Ya!, and that you accept it with civility

[m spellman]

Wow

DrHu?

Never mind. Have a joyful and wonderful day/night.

[neon_overload]

Upon upgrading to UP4 the interface will be changed to gnome-shell for most users.

Which is unfortunate, because a) it's so completely different to the previous Gnome-2 based interface, b) a lot of people "hate" it passionately (I don't hate it, but it's not my first choice) and c) because it's not even one of the ones Mint has created or supports, or intends to be the "default" in the future.

The answer is to install either the "cinnamon" or "mate-desktop-environment" package. Then after it's installed, choose your desired interface at the login screen, after clicking on your name.

Cinnamon is a new generation interface for Mint and it's flashier, but it's also fairly different to what you were previously used to.

If you want something very much like what you had previously in LMDE, you want MATE. Install mate-desktop-environment, choose MATE from the login screen after clicking your name, and you're set (though, unfortunately, if you had heavily customised your old interface, you may need to apply many of these customisations again).

The default of moving to Gnome 3 leaves users a bit lost IMHO, especially when MATE and Cinnamon are what Mint have been working so hard on perfecting.

In future, you need to read the release notes for the update pack you are installing or have just installed. These can be reached in the update manager tool. You could have learned about the new environments.

[Inkit]

You can give SolusOS a try

I will second this suggestion. I haven't personally used solus os because mint is more than enough for me, and I use xfce so no issues with gnome there. But I've checked a lot of youtube videos and it's pretty good. It is also based on mint and is developed by a previous mint user. Give it a shot and see. It's right now only a release candidate, but everybody has only good things to say about it.

[Monsta]

The default of moving to Gnome 3 leaves users a bit lost IMHO, especially when MATE and Cinnamon are what Mint have been working so hard on perfecting.

Well, these are consequences of making Gnome 3 an "upgrade" for Gnome 2. You update Debian, you get packages replaced, nothing unusual. Cinnamon is a separate package, no packages depend on it, so it's never installed automatically.

In the end, the best practice is

to read the release notes for the update pack you are installing

[zosorock]

Just upgraded and ended up with a horrible,ugly,non intuitive crappy interface like the new one from Ubuntu.

Can ya tell what I think about it. Loved this distro until now.

So how do I get the old interface back. The one that was in place before the "New Look" boy am I tired of that phrase. Especially from Google.

Any help would be appreciated. I am not all that technically savvy with Linux.

Couldn't agree more with you Spellman. I have used Unix in a 386SX, Macintoshes since System 6, Windows since 3.1, and many flavors of Linux (RedHat/CentOS/Conectiva, Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo and others). I thought Mint was the first one to have an actual shot at becoming a really user-friendly, Macintosh-like, operating system that I could install in my dad's computer and he would not call me to ask "How do I access the internet"? Mint 11 was pretty close but then 12 came and we are all back in the land of unstable software and a new complicated interface that only a teenager can fully enjoy and figure out, so it has become "just another Ubuntu". If I wanted Unity I would install Ubuntu. Why risk using an unstable Linux developed by a small team and supported by users who become hostile quite often and who like to belittle anyone with less knowledge than them? So I shall continue my search.

This update is so bad that I am considering buying a new Macintosh so I don't have to deal with the hurdles of updates and stuff that doesn't work, hours working on tweaking configurations, editing stuff on the shell, compiling sources and using hacks to get stuff to work properly, and then, once a year, be forced to upgrade to a new version because support is dropped and then have to do it all over again, or worse, new hacks, new tweaks, new compiling from source. And then they wonder why they can't get more people to start using Linux.

Don't mind the people's reaction here. Just like most places on the internet, they do not fully understanding the English language and its intricacies but are convinced that they do.

Good luck!

[m spellman]

To zosorock

I have been trying different desktops. XFCE seems to be close but so many things work different.

Tried Pinguy Linux. The overall layout was good but there were so many broken programs and I am not into compiling ( Tried it a few times,did not always go well ) and I just do not have the time to invest relearning something that I forget again so easily.

I enjoy the adventure of trying different distros but also like to keep some things just as they are.

Coke tried years ago to retire the original and replace it with New Coke and that went over so poorly they had to bring it back as "Classic Coke"

There have been others.

I was a little surprised with some of the reactions to the post but I suppose,as you said,it is to be expected and I agree with the interface for the younger generation. Seems everyone,including Google and my cable company Verizon are going down that path.

The sales folks have a mantra. KSS ( which I won't explain here ) that still makes sense.

The wife has a Mac. Converted her after 10+ years on Windows. I used to have to correct issues weekly,sometimes daily. She has had the Mac for almost 2 years ans has not been able to screw up anything yet with the exception of bringing Firefox to it's Knees with too many facebook pages open. I am impressed but even they seem to be headed for the touch screen interface.

Good luck with the search and thanks for the reply.