Mate menu customisation - trying Brisk but would like to change it...

[DerekP]

Hiya,

I'm looking at using Mint Mate for my parents in a post Win7 world. Mate, because i get the impression that its feature-set is fairly stable, so my parents (bless them) are less likely to receive some revolutionary new way to access an application or their documents.

However, the Mint Mate default appearances are just awful and a real-turnoff (cluttered looking and confusing tbh). I had a look at Solus' implementation of Mate and its lovely. So i thought i'd copy it. I've never themed or customised Linux to date, so i've been happy that my research found and i've used:
- Papirus Icons
- Adapta Theme
- Brisk Menu

It looks waaay better. But i'm not happy with the menu. I would much rather the Cinnamon style menu where its a simple (and clean) two columns for the menu and the left-most column for favourites (the idea of having to click to enter favourites doesn't make sense to me). I have hunted around but i'm not sure where to go from here. I'm ok to replace the Brisk menu if that achieves what i want - or modify the menu somehow to achieve the layout i'm looking for.

Any pointers are warmly received, thanks.

[smurphos]

Stock Mint menu and Mate Advanced Menu can both be made less cluttered (via right click on there respective icons) > preferences. But you'll always need to click between favourites and all applications even in the most bare-boned setups.

Brisk has a few config options but they are hidden away in the dconf database. apt install dconf-editor to install a GUI to access the settings. Once there search brisk. There is no way to not have favourites as a clickable category. Dash mode is quite a dramatic change - a Gnome3 style fullscreen menu - you'll need to either log-out and log back in for that change to take effect or remove and re-add the brisk menu to the panel.

[DerekP]

That's a bummer.

Thanks for the suggestion.

In Solus they have reduced it to two columns, but as you say - the Favourites are still a click away

I had a bit of a play with the configs and i couldn't get it to appear much different there (irrespective of Favs). Oh well, i've probably poured more energy than i need to into it. I could just ask my parents to try it. Maybe i'll just pin their favourites to the task bar (quick launch).

Just musing... I wonder if Mint will consider a bit of a visual overhaul. Its looking quite dated and first impressions aren't spectacular anymore.

[smurphos]

Just musing... I wonder if Mint will consider a bit of a visual overhaul. Its looking quite dated and first impressions aren't spectacular anymore.

It's not long had one (assuming you are trying 19 or 19.1)

They are making incremental improvements to the Mint-Y themes with each point release, but I don't see the Mate or XFCE editions getting any dramatic change in there default layouts.

By the way for your parents you might find XFCE and the whisker menu better.

Again you'll probably think it looks quite dated/basic out of the box but as with all the Desktops it's not that hard to make them into something completely different.

[DerekP]

Yeah, i've whipped both up in a VM and they were pretty even. I'll try the Whisker menu (is that the default XFCE menu?).

While i do think it looks dated, i think it's about how aesthetics can improve the UX (not just flash, but appropriate design). When i used the combination of Papirus and Adapta, there appeared to be a bit more 'white space' between items, and the cleaner 'flatter' look was easier to see the difference between apps. The highly detailed and tiny original icons were too 'busy'. The default Mint quicklaunch icons for example are tiny and 'mushy' - Firefox doesn't even look like Firefox - and they're square which probably adds to the cluttered feel.

Thanks for your opinions

[gm10]

But you'll always need to click between favourites and all applications even in the most bare-boned setups.

While technically true, what you can do is enable the recent documents plugin in the menu's preferences and disable the favourites showing by default, that'll put the recently used applications listing to the right of the regular application listing, which for most practical purposes would be very similar to favourites.

[DerekP]

Good idea... and i'd better update my signature! I haven't played with Mint for a while and it shows! (it was saying i'm using Mint 15).

[roblm]

Take a look at my customized menu, the MATE Applications Menu, in this post:

viewtopic.php?f=206&t=185952#p964552

Mate applications menu.png

[DerekP]

Wow, that's a lot of effort. Thanks for posting, but i think i'll not do that I couldn't just copy yours, because your layout isn't to my liking.

[roblm]

The initial setup takes about 10 minutes, unless you want to add the extra optional customization. The layout can be changed very easily and quickly using the Menu Editor. Any app can be added to the opened menu by simply dragging it to the Applications category. Use the Move Up and Move Down buttons to reposition any category or app, and they don't need to be in alphabetical order. Add separators to divide sections.

Here is another layout with the favorite apps section moved to the top:

mate applications menu.jpg