Poll: Desktop environments

[kmb42vt]

I voted for my choice and have pretty much kept my mouth shut about why I made the choice that I did and the reasons. I did post a rare (for me) +1 about the "Chevy owners being Ford wannabes" simply because I appreciated the humor of the post, not necessarily the analogy. So I've been quiet for the most part but I guess it's time to say a few things now...in no particular order...

This thread was bound to cause controversy, simply no way around it. These types of subjects always do. It was also known that the thread would promote a lot of good conversation as well (which it certainly has and nearly all on topic too). People are people and subjects like this one will always bring out the best and worst so to speak.

The world of the Gnome DE is in great turmoil now and this has affected all Linux based DEs in general. Some more, some less. Overall, Gnome was the most popular DE available for Linux disros through the years, up until the coming of Gnome 3 and the deprecation of Gnome 2. The immediate result of this departure from the "traditional desktop" by the Gnome devs was the creation of new DEs/interfaces such as MATE, Cinnamon and Unity and this, with all due respect to everyone, is called "change". And change, at the very least, causes all sorts of confusion. Most people hate change especially when it comes to things they consider "every day" tools and devices.

This flurry of confusion, creation of new DEs and the acceptance and rejection thereof will settle down in time and I'm sure that time will be reasonably short .

I'm not really concerned about certain folks "soapboxing" their particular choice of DE. Nothing new there since this kind of thing has been going on in the world of PCs vs Macs for the last two decades or so. Why should the world of Linux Distros be immune to this? What makes Linux so special that it is expected to "rise above" this sort of rivalry? As I said, people are people, 'nuff said about that.

That being said, calling people names, making derogatory statements about other OSs or DEs or users thereof is not acceptable. Those who do this should receive one warning and one warning only. If they do it again then they should be immediately banned. You're entitled to your opinion but you do not have the right to be nasty or disrespectful.

Okay, I've gone and rambled on again so I'll stop now. All the above is just my opinion of course. And by the way, I agree with releasing two different ISOs of the "Main Edition" of Linux Mint 13. One with Gnome 3/Cinnamon and the other with MATE. If the user wants gnome-shell or Unity w/Compiz instead then they can install the Gnome 3/Cinnamon iso, remove Cinnamon and install either one.

Please forgive any typos. I've gone past my lunch time and don't have time to proofread.

[Mister.T]

I can only imagine that those of you who have slated gnome3 have either not even bothered to configure it beyond the default or are just going with the flow. Gnome 3 DE can be made to run in a very similar way to Gnome 2. By adding the Gnome menu and maximise/minimise buttons to the windows and a few other tweak's, you will feel right at home. Apart from that Gnome 3 appears, at least on my machine, to be even snappier than Gnome 2.

Please don't slate if all you have seen is the default.

[JonesKS]

If you haven't tried XFCE 4.8 go take it for a spin NOW. I was also disappointed with 4.6, but 4.8 is just about perfect. Mind you, it comes in a horribly unattractive form, but being one of the most hackable desktops around everything can be adjusted to taste. In my opinion even better than Gnome 2. Too bad Xubu is full of holes like Dutch cheese, crashing all over the place. An XFCE Mint LTS main edition would be like a dream come true (no LMDE, thank you).

As for the Cinnamons and such: how do you make a SHORTCUT?! Don't want to say the “W” word, but even the '95 edition of the “Redmont OS” had this much functionality. Something's not right here...

Check out my "buggy" Xubuntu interface.

Xubuntu + Mint Icons

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Xubuntu + Mint Icons

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[JonesKS]

I can only imagine that those of you who have slated gnome3 have either not even bothered to configure it beyond the default or are just going with the flow. Gnome 3 DE can be made to run in a very similar way to Gnome 2. By adding the Gnome menu and maximise/minimise buttons to the windows and a few other tweak's, you will feel right at home. Apart from that Gnome 3 appears,2 at least on my machine, to be even snappier than Gnome 2.

Please don't slate if all you have seen is the default.

How do you make a shortcut??

[veggen]

How do you make a shortcut??

What exactly are you talking about? We ain't got shortcuts in Linux land. We got Launchers and we got symlinks. And shortcut where? Desktop? In Cinnamon, you make a launcher by right clicking a menu entry and selecting "Add to desktop". You make a symlink by right-clicking a file and selecting "Make link". What exactly is it that you're missing?
If you saying you can make a launcher for an arbitrary app (that's not in the menu), then yeah, Nautilus kind of axed it and that sucks, but it's easy enough to make it yourself if you really need it.

[BTPFMJ]

I can only imagine that those of you who have slated gnome3 have either not even bothered to configure it beyond the default...

Good defaults are very important. With Gnome 2 (especially with the Mint flavor of it) I didn't have to worry if desktop settings will be OK if someone creates a new user. I could even encourage people to install Mint themselves because they got a friendly and familiar environment by default. They could tweak things, but they didn't need to, especially not right at the beginning.

If I have to tweak every little detail before I can give the system to someone, then it's not a very user-friendly distro. I can do the same with Debian or Gentoo or almost anything.

(It's an entirely different topic that Gnome 3 cannot be configured to provide all the functionality of Gnome 2. It might work for you only if you use a relatively small subset of the functionality of Gnome 2. There's nothing wrong with that, but you cannot generalize from your limited experience to all use cases.)

[digital ownage]

Just make a release with mate-cinnamon, XFCE and KDE. And let all other shells be available by the repo's.

[cwwgateway]

I can only imagine that those of you who have slated gnome3 have either not even bothered to configure it beyond the default or are just going with the flow. Gnome 3 DE can be made to run in a very similar way to Gnome 2. By adding the Gnome menu and maximise/minimise buttons to the windows and a few other tweak's, you will feel right at home. Apart from that Gnome 3 appears,2 at least on my machine, to be even snappier than Gnome 2.

Please don't slate if all you have seen is the default.

Mint 12 featured a configured Gnome Shell. There are many threads on the forums about configuring gnome 3, and I spent a lot of time after Mint 12 came out trying to get gnome shell right where I wanted it. It basically looked like Cinnamon. Do you know what I realized? It took 10 seconds longer for me to boot when I had lots of extensions on (Most people won't have that big of a difference but my boot time was pretty long anyway). I also realized that I was still limited to installing the extensions that existed, and it wasn't easy installing these (unless they were on the extensions.gnome.org). With Cinnamon, I installed and had, by default, almost exactly what I wanted. Applets are also so much faster than extensions. Also, there are some applets that are much better than their gnome shell extension counterparts, if they even have gnome shell counterparts (I love the classic menu). I can use any desktop environment out there (I've never extensively tried a window manager), but I like Cinnamon (and Xfce) better than all the rest (besides gnome 2, but they're getting there).

[Gaugamela]

How do you make a shortcut??

What exactly are you talking about? We ain't got shortcuts in Linux land. We got Launchers and we got symlinks. And shortcut where? Desktop? In Cinnamon, you make a launcher by right clicking a menu entry and selecting "Add to desktop". You make a symlink by right-clicking a file and selecting "Make link". What exactly is it that you're missing?
If you saying you can make a launcher for an arbitrary app (that's not in the menu), then yeah, Nautilus kind of axed it and that sucks, but it's easy enough to make it yourself if you really need it.

Mint should create their own file manager or use Marlin because Nautilus right now is just pathetic and oversimplified. It's as bad as Windows Explorer.

[jackmetal]

I don't share the view of keeping things as before. Time goes on, life goes on, things are changing...
Hold on to the past is a waste of time in my opinion.

I vote for Gnome Shell

+1

And also my reason for looking back into Fedora or straight debian.

[cwwgateway]

I don't share the view of keeping things as before. Time goes on, life goes on, things are changing...
Hold on to the past is a waste of time in my opinion.

I vote for Gnome Shell

+1

And also my reason for looking back into Fedora or straight debian.

A lot of people like the past. Anyways, I wish you luck on your ventures with Fedora and debian, and I remind you that gnome shell is only an "apt install gnome-shell" away (at least on linux mint).

[jackmetal]

I don't share the view of keeping things as before. Time goes on, life goes on, things are changing...
Hold on to the past is a waste of time in my opinion.

I vote for Gnome Shell

+1

And also my reason for looking back into Fedora or straight debian.

A lot of people like the past. Anyways, I wish you luck on your ventures with Fedora and debian, and I remind you that gnome shell is only an "apt install gnome-shell" away (at least on linux mint).

agreed.... I'm actually running the 'old' lmde with gnome-shell (Sid on one system, testing on another and the update packs on my wife's) and I'm testing the latest lmde (with gnome-shell installed). I'd love a DE agnostic build in which you could pick your DE of choice during install, but that's asking a lot.

[cwwgateway]

agreed.... I'm actually running the 'old' lmde with gnome-shell (Sid on one system, testing on another and the update packs on my wife's) and I'm testing the latest lmde (with gnome-shell installed). I'd love a DE agnostic build in which you could pick your DE of choice during install, but that's asking a lot.

While I personally agree with you, IIRC, the desktop agnostic version was considered to be against mint's "works out of the box" philosophy, and it wasn't going to happen (again, IIRC, Ikey, the dev who originally created LMDE, offered to create a desktop agnostic version of LMDE so that other editions could be built off of it).

[colyn]

I'm a long time KDE user but I also like Mate and Cinnamon. None of the others impressed me but that is not to say they aren't good..

Hopefully in the near future LMDE KDE will make the current version available since 4.7.4 has the ghosting issue..

[vmarinho]

I'm using Gnome3 with MSGE (although I have MATE, Cinnamom, Gnome classic and Unity). It's absoluletly perfect. Hope that Mint team mantain it in future releases.

[cwwgateway]

I'm using Gnome3 with MSGE (although I have MATE, Cinnamom, Gnome classic and Unity). It's absoluletly perfect. Hope that Mint team mantain it in future releases.

The mint team stopped working on MGSE months ago. These extensions were merged into Cinnamon because the mint team couldn't get the level of control they wanted using extensions. However, you can use Mint 13 and install gnome shell. You can find the extensions somewhere probably (or possibly similar extensions). I know that there are multiple bottom panel extensions, application menu extensions (although not the Mint menu), windowlist extensions, etc. You can look for some at http://extensions.gnome.org. You can always stay with Mint 12, though (at least until support runs out).

[Bruce R]

As the only ‘Blog’ on the Web that’s likely to be heeded by its small development team, I guess that it’s hardly surprising that it has attracted so many new forum users with long pent-up frustrations like the small group who have always wanted Linux Mint to take a KDE desktop approach.
Their views don’t seem to have changed much from LM-3 days, when the majority ‘voted’ for a Gnome-based approach that quickly evolved into the version that we all came to love (or hate), with LM-10 (Julia) probably being the pinnacle and able to accept a whole new generation of applications that were emerging and actually worked, like OpenShot.
Sadly, thanks to Ubuntu Unity and Gnome3 that versatility seems to have been lost, on an ‘it ain’t broke so we’ll fix it’ basis, spurred on by bean-counter visions, so the valiant efforts of folk like the Zorin brothers, Clem’s team and those of the MATE and Cinnamon teams has been welcomed by those of us who simply want a ‘Keep It Simple’ and ‘free’ alternative to the fortress Redmond behemoth.
As ever, being a simple user rather than a developer, I have my fingers crossed, hoping that Clem and the team will rescue us from the Unity / Gnome3 disaster !
As per my vote, with LMDE I have been getting most mileage from MATE on my desktop, although LMDE still won’t install on my laptop, rather reminiscent of earlier Ubuntu days, where desperate changes of kernel didn’t really help
So in the face of ‘negative vibes’, Very Good luck to Clem and his small team.
At the risk of boring folk this forum rather than open 'Blog' posting is intended to increase the chance of it being read.

[zenskillz]

I tried updating LMDE RC and it failed miserably 3x. That took a LONG time. Thank you clonezilla.

I finally got LMDE updated using just terminal and no DE. Unfortunately, I didn't like any of the new DE environments - Gnome 3 shell, Cinnamon, or mate. The startup wait always felt "wonky" as the icon always appeared in the lower right-hand corner in whatever environment loaded. I showed my teenage son Gnome 3 shell and he was able to crash it in the first 15 seconds by opening ~10 blank activities / new screens or so. Completely locked up and unresponsive. Maybe it's improved since then?

I've decided to point to the frozen repositories for now and I haven't had time to fiddle with this install since.

I voted for KDE, but I know KDE LMDE isn't available without some hassle I presume. I know it's lame, but compiz is probably my favorite thing about using Linux. I would have voted for compiz if that had been an option. Jello-like wobbly windows just gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling. And when I close an app, I like seeing it shattered and broken like glass. I can't do that on windows or Quackintosh. I'll be looking for an alternative to Gnome I think. Most likely KDE or XFCE.

[Murdock]

I was always an XFCE player, but I primarily used Gnome on my main rig until SalineOS came out.
Right now I'm a Bodhi addict. I love E17. I think when the LTS(12.04) version of Bodhi(2.0) comes out that'll be a permanent fixture on my main machine.
XFCE 4.10 is looking awesome and I'll see what Nordquist comes up with for his 2.0 Saline ( once Wheezer goes stable).
Interesting times in the Linux world.
I love Cinnamon ......on my toast.

[galher]

Just tested sinnamon and it's awesome!