So long Cinnamon! Hello ... Gnome Shell? Unity?

[killer de bug]

Interesting. I want to see what a MacOS with a Arch Linux Kernel looks like. I hope you will put screenshot in the thread

[GeneC]

xenopeek..

^ Interested to see how you make out with that on Arch. A month or so ago I tried to install Pantheon on my Manjaro install with no luck. I did not document my procedure, so would be interested to hear how you make out..

[xenopeek]

Meh. Spent half an hour trying to get Pantheon to work, but I keep getting "oh no something went wrong!" messages at login and then have no mouse cursor or wallpaper, and basically no way to interact with it except press enter to log out again... I'll try it from a LiveCD

Edit: tried the daily build of ElementaryOS from a LiveCD. I'm decidedly unimpressed with it. Visual bugs like glitchy panel, popovers jumping around the screen, and so on. Tried a few of the default applications. Some of them are broken and useless--like calendar doesn't show appointments you add to it--and look like forks of Gnome applications and I didn't like what they did with them. Bork bork bork. Gnome Shell is looking better and better to me

[GeneC]

................Gnome Shell is looking better and better to me

Gotta agree with that...

[wanderer7]

I've also given serious thought to KDE and after having run that on VirtualBox for a while now was initially going to go for Linux Mint 16 KDE. However, the more I used KDE the more it felt like its getting in my way.

I never liked KDE myself, until I discovered Netrunner. That distro radically changed my views about KDE. It used to be based on Kubuntu. Well, it's main edition is still based on Kubuntu, but now they have Manjaro/Arch based edition too.
link: http://www.netrunner-os.com/
I've tried GNOME once. I really liked it, but I had to learn a lot of new things. Back then, I was new to GNU/Linux itself, so I decided to choose something easier - Cinnamon (this is what I'm using right now).
If an ex-windows user wants to try GNOME, I believe one should "empty the cup" first, like a Zen Master would say.
One day, when I'm ready for new adventures, I might install a distro with the GNOME desktop again.

[Adelante]

Oh, the Manjaro/Arch based, rolling release edition of Netrunner is really nice and, thank God, easy to install. I just have a few must-haves, like Netflix, Amazon streaming video, Dropbox and Focuswriter to work out before it's perfect, but I'll wait for the 64-bit version to go to the trouble.

[InkKnife]

I look forward to Mint making good use of the technologies Gnome is developing but I disagree with the Gnome team on a very fundamental level when it comes to GUI design. Gnome is like Chrome to me. It does not matter that certain things may be better because the GUI rubs me so wrong I could never be happy using it.

[xenopeek]

Gnome Shell 3.12 just made it to stable repository on Arch Linux, so I've disabled the unstable and testing repositories that I enabled earlier (nothing broke, but I don't need to be that bleeding edge ).

Cinnamon 2.2 seems to be (almost completely) packaged for Arch Linux, so I'll give that a look later. I'm eager to try Cinnamon now supporting Gnome CSDs, which should make Gnome applications like Videos and Music be as awesome on Cinnamon as they are on Gnome Shell.

In other news, the KDE visual design group is playing catch up to Gnome Shell. Here's a look at the new "flat look" widget theme in development: http://wheeldesign.blogspot.nl/2014/04/ ... -time.html. It is a new theme, so don't worry those of you that enjoy the "boxes within boxes, with gradients on everything" look of Oxygen And from that you can surmise my problem with most KDE themes...

Anyway, I'm still happy on Gnome Shell and prefer it over Unity. But no harm in looking around.

[killer de bug]

I'm eager to try Cinnamon now supporting Gnome CSDs, which should make Gnome applications like Videos and Music be as awesome on Cinnamon as they are on Gnome Shell.

Don't expect too much. From my understanding (a discussion with Clem basically), it's not that wonderful

I will try to install Cinnamon 2.2 on my Manjaro VB

[xenopeek]

I just installed it (took just 10 seconds or so--pacman rules!) and created a new user account so I could try it with a fresh slate. It seems to work somewhat. Gedit (top left) and Videos (bottom right) both look as on Gnome Shell. Terminal (bottom left) looked fine at at first, but switching it to dark theme breaks it (title bar should have changed to dark also). Nemo (top right) I don't know what happened; this is a new user account with default themes -- what's up with the unreadable breadcrumb bar? IMO Nemo has gotten even uglier this time round I'll give it some more looks later, but I'm staying on Gnome Shell for now as my primary.

[killer de bug]

Nemo (top right) I don't know what happened; this is a new user account with default themes -- what's up with the unreadable breadcrumb bar? IMO Nemo has gotten even uglier this time round :

I told you not to expect too much. Clem asked the gnome dev for a small collaboration on this. They just don't see the point.
As a result if you want everything to be coherent, the road to follow is forking. And I'm pretty sure, Clem and the team don't want to play that game.

[xenopeek]

the road to follow is forking

I'm not sure I follow; I thought with Cinnamon 2.0 it was made fully separate from Gnome Shell? What more needs to be forked for Nemo breadcrumb bar to be displayed with readable text in Cinnamon? I'll admit to not being a theme wizard -- I always stick with the default theme... Perhaps I need to install some more themes for Nemo on Cinnamon to work properly?

[killer de bug]

the road to follow is forking

I'm not sure I follow; I thought with Cinnamon 2.0 it was made fully separate from Gnome Shell? What more needs to be forked for Nemo breadcrumb bar to be displayed with readable text in Cinnamon? I'll admit to not being a theme wizard -- I always stick with the default theme... Perhaps I need to install some more themes for Nemo on Cinnamon to work properly?

Oupps sorry. From my understanding the problem is CSD.
Clem and mtwebster can explain this way better than me.

[InkKnife]

So, the Gnome guys are serious about removing window widgets?
How long until Gnome is dumbed down to iOS levels of simplicity and uselessness?

[xenopeek]

What do you mean with "window widgets"? As for dumbed down, that's your opinion and you should use whatever works best for you But let me use what works for me. Gnome Shell to me is a distraction free and productive desktop. I get things done efficiently, and I like how it looks.

[InkKnife]

What do you mean with "window widgets"? As for dumbed down, that's your opinion and you should use whatever works best for you But let me use what works for me. Gnome Shell to me is a distraction free and productive desktop. I get things done efficiently, and I like how it looks.

Window widgets are the minimize, maximize and close control in the top bar of a window.
I should have chosen my words better.
It has been interesting watching two very different and conflicting design philosophies emerging in the Linux community. What I think of as the neo-minimalists exemplified by the UI of Chrome, Gnome3 and the soon to be released Autralis UI in Firefox and the traditionalists of which Mint is the leader with MATE and Cinnamon being direct and explicit reactions to GUI choices made by Gnome.
In the short term, the two years or so since Gnome3 came out the traditionalists seem to be winning. Is there even one major distro which features Gnome3 as their flagship desktop?
It will be interesting to see what the situation will be in a another two years.
But no matter what we will have a choice, something that cannot be said for OSX or Windows users who are stuck with what ever Apple or MS decide to give them (or do to them).

[Previous1]

Is there even one major distro which features Gnome3 as their flagship desktop?

... Fedora.

[Condorman]

Is there even one major distro which features Gnome3 as their flagship desktop?

... Fedora.

Hmm, and that's about it. I remember a while ago when looking for a decent Debian based Gnome Shell distro myself that I couldn't find one, certainly not one that's up to date with Gnome as Ubuntu used to be back in the day. There are really no major distros outside Fedora that offer it. Even now trying to find one is impossible. You're stuck with old versions of Gnome 3 on things like openSUSE or Ubuntu GNOME. Not an ideal situation. In fact I'm amazed that no one has risen to fill the void, but then maybe Gnome's "do it our way or the highway" attitude has put developers off. They don't even properly support themes (and are actively against the idea - http://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/ ... in-threes/), and the less said about the horrible broken extensions website the better.

But no matter for me personally, as I feel that for my needs Cinnamon is what I imagined Gnome 3 would be, but isn't.

Disclaimer: I have spent a lot of time with Gnome 3 (from initial launch 3.0 to 3.10), and liked it a great deal. At the end of the day I just felt that it was broken on many levels that just didn't suit me, and often felt unfinished in use.

[JosephM]

@xenopeek, the nemo breadcrumbs always look like that with the adwaita theme. Changing to a different theme would most likely fix it. I don't remember anything about the breadcrumb styling changing from 2.0.

[vayth]

Hehe, I'll be watching this thread closely.

I've been using Mint even now, but I always miss my time with Unity. Cinnamon is lighter than Unity, yes, but I haven't been able to replicate most Unity things with it. It's becoming better and better with its extensions. At least I got title bar on panel with Maximus (waiting for someone finally get the Global Menu/LIM to work as well, but it's optional).
I'm still missing dock on the left side (even on Windows, before Ubuntu introduced Unity, I've moved the taskbar to the left side). Cairo dock left panel overlapped with Cinnamon top panel, it's usable, but still a bit annoying.

I'm waiting for 14.04 release, but I'm also curious about Gnome Shell and ElementaryOS (Isis almost come out too). But looking at your review about Panthenon DE, I guess I'll try it last, or maybe skip it.