What does the lack of topics tell us?

[sackofspuds]

I just applied Update Pack 4 and after removing compiz.desktop from ~/.config/autostart got Gnome 3 working.

Have to say I haven't had time to keep up with all the changes, though I knew Gnome 3 was on its way.

I then spotted the poll on the forum about desktops being used and saw that Gnome Shell & KDE got 11%, Cinnamon 29% and Mate 17%.

However, I then noticed that in the Gnome 3 forum there were precisely 2 topics versus 30 on the Cinnamon forum and came to the conclusion that maybe for now I'll just use my laptop rather than mess about with desktops and windows managers.

[jjaythomas]

I'm unclear..

for now I'll just use my laptop rather than mess about with desktops and windows managers.

What is on your laptop now??

J.Jay

[sackofspuds]

I'm unclear..

for now I'll just use my laptop rather than mess about with desktops and windows managers.

What is on your laptop now??

J.Jay

Yes, I take your point. I am of course using a desktop manager now, Gnome 3. What I meant was that I just went with what came with Update Pack 4.

[digitalking]

I'm unclear..

for now I'll just use my laptop rather than mess about with desktops and windows managers.

What is on your laptop now??

J.Jay

Yes, I take your point. I am of course using a desktop manager now, Gnome 3. What I meant was that I just went with what came with Update Pack 4.

sackofspuds, if you were using the Gnome version of LMDE it automatically updated to Gnome 3. Anyone doing a fresh install of LMDE would actually have to manually add Gnome 3 going forward, but since you had the system installed this is what happened via default in Update Pack 4.

Adding Cinnamon and/or MATE is actually very easy to do. You can read all of the info in detail in the Linux Mint blog post that announced update pack 4 here, http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1949. If you want to simply add one or more of the desktops you can install them via the terminal (or synaptic if you prefer).

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install cinnamon

or

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install mate-desktop-environment

If you want to see how these environments function beforehand you can always download the most recent LMDE ISO image (Cinnamon/MATE version) to see if you like them (Live CD or Virtual Machine). Mint 13 Maya also has a MATE and Cinnamon version available if you'd rather test them out in the Ubuntu based Mint. MATE has the look and feel that Gnome 2 had prior in LMDE Update Pack 3, with some changes to program names, etc. Cinnamon is a fork of the Gnome 3 shell that makes things easier to navigate if you are more used the Gnome 2 environment. If you're not having any issues with running Gnome 3 performance-wise, then Cinnamon should run just fine and it should be faster to install than MATE package/time-wise. I enjoy both of these new desktop environments, but I'm currently using XFCE myself.

If you decide to stay with Gnome 3, you might check out some of the shell extensions that are available with your current version at https://extensions.gnome.org/. I've used these to help streamline the Gnome 3 experience in the past.

Hope you enjoy Update Pack 4.

[jjaythomas]

Oh... Thank you

Yes, I take your point. I am of course using a desktop manager now, Gnome 3. What I meant was that I just went with what came with Update Pack 4.

That never occurred to me being a 'XFCE junkie. (UPack 3 to UPack 4 ISO change from Gnome to now cinnamon/Mate (how upgrade done)).

J.Jay

[sackofspuds]

If you want to see how these environments function beforehand you can always download the most recent LMDE ISO image (Cinnamon/MATE version) to see if you like them (Live CD or Virtual Machine).

If you decide to stay with Gnome 3, you might check out some of the shell extensions that are available with your current version at https://extensions.gnome.org/. I've used these to help streamline the Gnome 3 experience in the past.

Thanks for this info, very interesting. I have been out of touch with the various distros etc for 6+ months. I see from Distrowatch that of the top 6 downloads over 6 months Ubuntu now uses Unity and is very much in 2nd place to Mint with Cinnamon/MATE, Fedora and Debian use Gnome, Mageia and openSUSE use KDE. Certainly livens things up a bit.

Unfortunately, I don't have time or, frankly, the inclination, to try them out.