Submitted by When GNOME did its version 3 and Ubuntu came up with Unity, the popularity of Linux Mint sky-rocketed, because they stuck with GNOME 2.32. The Mint team has been working on their next version for a while now, and today, they first unveiled what they’re working on. There’s good news – the team is working on making GNOME 3 likeable. Their question for this release: “How do we make people like Gnome 3? And what do we provide as an alternative to those who still do not want to change?”
The first part of that question can be answered by what Mint team lead Clement Lefebvre calls the Mint Gnome Shell Extensions. The goal of the MGSE is to re-implement the known and proven GNOME 2.x desktop using GNOME 3 technologies. You can individually turn these extensions on and off; when they’re all turned off, you have a vanilla GNOME 3 experience. Turn them all on, and you get a more traditional desktop.
“Gnome 3 is changing all that and is developing a better way for us to interact with our computer. From our point of view here at Linux Mint, we’re not sure they’re right, and we’re not sure they’re wrong either,” Lefebvre writes, “What we’re sure of, is that if people aren’t given the choice they will be frustrated and our vision of an operating system is that your computer should work for you and make you feel comfortable. So with this in mind, Gnome 3 in Linux Mint 12 needs to let you interact with your computer in two different ways: the traditional way, and the new way, and it’s up to you to decide which way you want to use.”
At the same time, there are still people who want GNOME 2.x-proper. For these people, Linux Mint has worked very closely with the team behind MATE, the GNOME 2.x fork. The problem is GNOME 2.x can’t be installed alongside GNOME 3 (at least, not easily); MATE, on the other hand, can be installed alongside GNOME 3. However, the project isn’t there just yet, so Mint is working hard with them to get there.
For me, this is great news. I dislike both GNOME 3 and Unity, and I just want a GNOME 2-like experience – I don’t have the time or patience to be a Canonical or GNOME guinea pig with their oversized buttons and lack of minimise. Linux Mint is starting to look like a good option here – and I’m not alone in that assessment, since Linux Mint is seeing extraordinary uptake, and may surpass Ubuntu this year.
Linux Mint 12 is planned for somewhere later this year – when it’s done, basically.
Make the top bar disappear with full screen applications or games, and allow me have an unsuspended laptop with the lid closed. Setting sane defaults is good, but for expletive sake allow us to configure the desktop / laptop to our needs!
Well, I recently had a look into Gnome 3.2 in Ubuntu 11.10.
The first thing that’s somehow shocking: Compared to Unity 2D/3D Gnome 3, while still being plain crap, is actually a useable user interface. That being said …
Having played around with the default Gnome 3.2 config for some hours I simply couldn’t stop laughing. It seems the Gnome Developers decided that …
– … shutting down your computer is an unwanted feature of your electricity company as they lose money if you shutdown your system over night, so they (the Gnome Developers) made it as retarded as somehow possible to actually get to the desired “Power off…” (I know there’s a Gnome-Shell extension that makes peace with that ALT+Left-click “Me Menu” brainfart)
– … it is simply too inferior to give the tard in front of the screen the power to control the font size/face and/or height of the default top panel. You need to prove yourself worthy by either being able to code up your own theme to tinker with the top-bar or by being able to hack around in the default theme.
– … it is simply too inferior to give the mouse-cursor tosser in front of the screen the power to EASILY customize several aspects of the UI – that seems to be THE reason for the bastardized “Gnome Tweak Tool” that’s a laughable approach at an “Tweak Tool” at best.
– … it simply can’t be tolerated to give the user a meaningful control over the power management options (timeout for the screen standby, timeout for hard drive standby, et al) – that would make the aforementioned, poor, electricity companies lose hard earned money if it would be easy to setup a worthwhile power saving plan (Windows Vista/7 runs Gnome 2.x AND 3.x into the ground hard at this particular matter).
– … a user shouldn’t be able to control his screen savers nor be able to set preferences. They already castrated Gnome 2 in this regard, and it seems to excelled in Gnome 3.
and the most important thing
– … it would actually cost a medium fortune to hire, or have, guys in the development team who understand shit about user interface design.
I could continue that list of epic failures, but I think we all know the, to put it politely, shortcomings of Gnome 3 too well.
While Gnome 3.2 matured from 3.0 in some areas it is still a failure of a user interface on so many levels that it’s impossible to even list them up. In short, it’s the same useless crap as Canonical’s Unity 2D/3D but – as weird as it may sound – way more usable than Unity.
Now that the rant is done …
Knowing how Gnome 3 “feels” I think the approach of Linux Mint is extremely well thought-through (by judging from the screenshots and the wee bit of information that got – finally – posted to the Mint Blog). I actually like the ideas depictured and described there; it can only make the Gnome 3.x experience better. However, having MATE as an option in case the Gnome 3 UI doesn’t cut it is a great feat.
Now, while the ideas are great, we yet have to try the real thing, and I’m sure it’ll be a whole lot of fun to test it out for everyone. If it works out the way I figure it’ll be the first really usable environment for Gnome 3 and I’ll gladly switch to Mint 13 (which should be 12.04 LTS) once it’s out.
At the moment I still enjoy my Gnome 2.3x freedom in Fuduntu (switched from Mint 9 just a few months ago).
As a conclusion: There’s no easy way to make people “like Gnome 3” unless the Gnome Devs finally realize that it’s the worst of all ideas to pull a tablet-ish/smartphone-ish user interface onto the desktop.
IF I would want to have a “mobile user interface” powering the desktop I would want the Android user interface … but that’s a a different story entirely.
Edited 2011-11-05 09:40 UTC
Isn’t that what Microsoft are doing with Windows 8?
The top bar does disappear with full screen applications.
The power icon in system settings lets you turn suspend/hibernate off.
troll harder…
This is actually a bold step for Linux Mint. I see Clem’s diplomacy when he says “not sure they’re right or wrong”. Obviously they are wrong in many ways. One of them is that I can’t even change the pointer. I’m not sure this is going against the exact purpose of GNOME 3, which is to stablish a “cohesive, clean and new experience” for the desktop.
GNOME 3 developers may interpret this as a confrontation, because what is going to be deployed as default is actually what GNOME guys WERE NOT intending to deploy at all.
The consensus so far for Ubuntu and Mint: G3 is a better stack and better backend. However, none of them have accepted the what the real purpose of GNOME 3 was. Only Fedora (the mighty beloved distro who blew everything, according to ESR) jumped the boat first, and deployed G3, in the vanilla way.
I’m sad by all of this. I’m actually considering W7 as main OS now. I may do some stupid moves. Free software is so cool, but what is the point when it gets in your way. I will need a new hard drive to make this move, so I have to wait a bit.
Linux distros were so fragmented, and now, with this new desktop dilema, they become ever more fragmented and confusing. We should have no choice, in the practical sense. One desktop to bind it all. This is the only way we can make Linux succeed. Not sure now if we were 1% of user share. GNOME 3 was deployed with this in mind – no choice, conquer the world. I would have appreciated if it was not this whole revolution.
Happy news is that Ubuntu has been placed SECOND on distrowatch.com, and after MANY years on the top. I hope that Mark Shuttleworth enjoys this one with many beers.
(And I hope this topic is free of lemur2, which will say something about KDE).
That’s why I moved to xubuntu
xfce really rocks these times! 
“How do we make people like Gnome 3?
How about. Set it on fire!
After installin Ubuntu Studio which now uses XFCE I cannot agree, has me pulling a Clarckson at the Mate PPA. https://launchpad.net/~amanas/+archive/mate-desktop *rocking back and forth yelling “COME ON, FASTER!!!” at the screen* just as Jezza does in the hope that the car will magically go faster.
Ubuntu Studio is definitely NOT a plain XFCE experience. God only know what they had put into this clean desktop environment … Try with Xubuntu, especially LTS version.
Fully agreed! XFCE is super-duper cool! Every version is only better, not more complicated. I love the way they give new features while leaving the layout and look on the same level for you to decide.
Thank you, XFCE team!
This is the only way we can make Linux succeed
Succeed at what exactly? For me Linux is the ultimate success story, fit’s my needs to a tee
I don’t use gnome, haven’t for 10 years or KDE either.
I laugh at all this gnome whining, everyone knew they were morons years ago. You have so much choice with linux to put together a functional, working, ultimate, desktop, it’s not funny.
I’m only a dumb chippy and I can do it, what’s wrong with all the folks that whine constantly?
The system I’m typing this from is Debian Wheezy upgraded from Squeeze, upgraded from Lenny, upgraded from… Well you get the picture, it’s over 7 years old and does anything I want.
Choose a distro that lets you roll over and a window manager that is flexible enough to do what you need and just keep on growing with the system as you go. It’s not hard and you avoid idiots forcing crap on you that just makes life difficult, it’s too easy with a bit of lateral thinking!
I’m not sure you got the point. I think you didn’t. GNOME 3 + MSGE is actually what we’ve been waiting for, and what GNOME guys don’t want.
At this point, there may be some gnome-dev-soul damning the day which extensions were allowed.
We need cohesive, sane interfaces. We don’t need choice. Not to the absurdity level. You seem to be happy having Linux desktop market share at 1%. I am not.
I whine because Microsoft and Apple deserve better punches on their stomach. What we have now is a medium size slim competitor, who gets knocked down every now and then, by decisions his own trainer takes.
In the contrary my friend, I’m sure GNOME devs are more than satisfied for making GNOME 3 extensible, so they can just focus in the core and let the rest customize it the way they want. And the best part in my opinion is they never advertised GNOME 3 as the powerful and scripted platform it is, but despite that developers and users are taking it to the next level.
What is the point them? Can’t they see that it will eventually become something completely different – and back to the roots?
Please do understand that Distrowatch only counts clicks from its visitors and thus means nothing. Just check for example Google Trends:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=ubuntu%2C+linux+mint
I can understand what Canonical is trying to do with Unity, they were sort of left with no choice. However, writing a desktop shell seems like a huge task and itA> taking them a long time to get it to an usable state and adding enough customization options to make it appealing to most users. (something they promised but did not deliver yet).
However, Gnome 3 is even much more disliked than Unity, given the change is much more radical and based on concepts that are not even tested or solid.
At this point, I wonder how long it will take fedora to give up and start adding extensions to Gnome 3 to make it more usable for most people too..
…I’ve been using Fedora 15 for about 2 weeks now with no issues other than a few graphical ones due to video drivers.
I was in the gnome3 hate camp for awhile after I gave the initial buggy as hell version a go. I tried it again and I’m loving it.
The only thing I’ve changed is I’ve installed the alternative logout menu.
‘Techies’ seem to amazingly afraid of change :p
As been discussed a million times. Expose style window switching is not for everyone. It depends which apps do you use and how many of them. Works for some people, doesn’t for other.
Gnome 3 devs don’t seem to get that, so a lot of people really dislikes their shell.
They actually did. It depends what sort of people you refer. The real problem are some people especially power users who are so accustomed to old habit they do not like change. In other word, inability to adapt. Expose windows style combined with the dynamic workspace works far better than the familiar traditional cluttered taskbar.
I think the big reaction about gnome-shell means its approach is right. Disruptive change historically met with some resistance.
Not to be offensive, but your idea is exactly the same as Gnome developers. To me, this idea just takes things into personal. Instead of investigating why so many people dislike gnome-shell in an objective manner, they just simply invent a theory that “people do not like it just because they are unable to change”.
You know some religious people explain natural phenomena in a similar way: “God made it in this way, end of story”.
No, expose really sucks, look at this:
http://imgbin.org/images/5539.jpg
This is my typical workplace, notice how all the windows looks very similar, and every time i open/close one, their order changes. It takes me a while to glance and realize which one do i need. I tried this for a few weeks and simply couldn’t get used to it, then went back to Unity.
When I presented my scenario to Gnome developers, they told me it’s my fault for not organizing them into desktops.
So, instead of a simple dock with 6 clear icons, their alternative is to use confusing expose-style previews, and forcing me to think of a sceheme to organize my apps into separate desktops.
Gnome developers have a really strange idea of simplicity..
notice how all the windows looks very similar
Out of curiosity, how woudl you locate them in a classic taskbar? because the programs in the taskbar is even worse.
It’s not, specially on more modern OSs such as OSX and Windows 7. Simply click the icon you need and you are using that application. Out of 6 icons, this is a very easy task.
But, there is a taskbar in GNOME Shell as you can in the same picture edited:
http://imagebin.org/182843
What would be the difference then?
I have no problem trying new things at home, but at work it’s a whole different issue.
Why would I spend time adjusting my workflow if all I’ve seen so far in Gnome3 seems to screw the way I like to work with multiple apps at once?
I might change my mind in the future if I find benefits in it, but so far I don’t.
Maybe some os interface designers should take some cues from modern website ui development.
For ease of accessibility you often find a horizontal drop down and vertical menus.
Web and usability should not be set in the same sentene.
It will be a bloodbath.
I can see it now…
Click on the Laughing Monkey to view contents of your hard drive. Click on the Mom icon to open your email. Double click the Fridge to open IM.
It would be horrible, non-discoverable, and non-standard.
Hey maybe the Gnome3 Devs ARE Web Devs after all.
I believe Mate will still be preferable to MGSE. Since Gnome Shell is slower than Gnome 2. Also right now, MGSE doesn’t look anywhere close to as polished as Mint 11. It sounds like it will take quite a few releases before it is.
I still don’t understand what Mint will offer to users who don’t have or want 3D drivers. Will MGSE work at all without 3D drivers? Will it work with the existing Gnome3 fallback mode or improve it in any way?
What’s wrong with KDE if you want a more traditional desktop?
I started sucking at 4 and hasn’t stopped yet.
That’s right. KDE 4 suffers more from the bad code quality and Gnome 3 suffers from the broken design! I have been using Gnome since 2.0 and I just jumped to KDE4. What I can say is that KDE 4.6 and 4.7 has a acceptable code quality. Another thing is that with KDE, I still have hopeful since code quality can be improved. But with Gnome 3, I feel it is an dead end for me.
I’m a Linux Mint Debian Edition convert myself. It’s a fair bit faster than either Ubuntu or the Ubuntu based Mint release, and Mint’s tested upgrade packs take most of the pain out of using a rolling distribution. It’s easily the most positive experience I’ve had with Linux (although it’d be even more positive if I hadn’t spent 20+ hours failing to get it working properly on my Thinkpad)
Like a lot of other people I didn’t think much of Gnome 3 or Unity. Even setting aside the usability issues, it just seems wrong to have a Linux DE that’s less customisable than Mac OS or Windows.
I’ve been pretty happily using XFCE on LMDE, but I’ll definitely be checking out Mint’s tweaks to Gnome. Based on their other decisions I’m expecting them to be practical and well thought out.
A better question might be “If there are people who refuse to use any Linux DE but Gnome 2 for the rest of their lives, how can we gently tell them to shove off back to Windows XP?”.
Gnome Shell is much better than Gnome 2. Unity is of about the same quality. If people are resistant to change in Linux, then Linux definitely isn’t the operating system for them.
I actually like Gnome3 but dual head support is massively broken. I can’t even take screen shots anymore (although it works fine with gimp). By default only the primary display is multi-desktop, what is this? Crazy.
The other thing that I think must be fixed is the thing where desktops are always vertical and arranged automatically. Please make it an option for me to manage my desktops like I used to: in a grid, with a fixed number and arrangement.
Yes, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so ashamed! I am a power desktop user and have lots of stuff open at once! I admit it! But please let me have my power-desktop management back!
Edited 2011-11-05 07:32 UTC
I’ve always liked Mint since I started playing with it off and on a few years ago. It was easy-mode Linux like Ubuntu, but more pleasing to the eye and most default settings were quite sane. It was that magical “Ubuntu but better” so many people were looking for.
For my serious Linux-ing at home I still use Arch; I’ve grown used to Gnome 3 under it though I wouldn’t say I like it. Now though, I may just have to look into using Mint as a main desktop system.
This is a great time for xfce and the distros that use it!
I applaud this move on the part of Linux Mint.
I’m personally staying on Debian stable with Gnome 2 after using LMDE for a while (and testing Xfce 4.8 build for Debian from debian-desktop.org), but watching closely what happens in the Mint world.
I totally switched to Scientific Linux 6, with Gnome 2.28. I am very happy, it is rock solid, with a very small footprint. It is actually much lighter than Xubuntu, about the same system requirements as Fluxbox in Ubuntu… I boot into Gnome 2.x within 140 megs of ram…
I too thought I could deal with Xfce 4.8 as my main desktop, in replacement of Gnome 2, but it still doesn’t feel like the original…
I have always disliked KDE, so it is simply not an option…
Gnome 2 is simply the best out there…
For the Deb guys, there is still Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (I ran it for more than a year…), or Debian 6… But changes are coming your way…
RHEL clones are your only hope so far… Either CentOS or Scientific Linux… Very good…
This is Linux for grown-ups !!!!!
I was extremely resistive to the idea of it when it first came out. I loved gnome 2.x. But I decided to give it a shot in FC15 and, I have to say, that other than a few issues related to my graphics card (ATI Mobility FireGL), it runs really really well. It’s my new default window manager from here on out.
My brother uses Mint on his netbook that I set up for him and he absolutely loves it. I’m curious to see how he likes the update.
I actually like Gnome 3, although it did take me a couple of weeks to get the hang of it.
It reminds me of when I bought an iBook G3 way back when. It ran 10.3 and I was coming from a Gnome background. It feels strange to alt-tab between applications rather than windows; to hide windows rather than minimise and the same issues appear with Gnome 3.
My tips are :
1) Middle click on the title bar to send the window to the back.
2) Use the alt-middle button to resize windows easily.
3) Alt-backtick switches between windows of the same application. Alt-tab swaps between applications.
4) Make good use of workspaces. On the “Activities” screen you can drag and drop windows to new workspaces. A very powerful and useful feature.
5) Keyboard shortcuts are your friends.
I don’t remember using any frigging shortcut in GNOME2, except for ALT+F2. Why should I work harder now to get stuff done?
First off, just a “Thank God for Linux Mint”; every time I read on this site someone saying Linux hasn’t managed a decent desktop experience yet, or that you still have to fiddle with it hugely to get it to work, I look calmly at my experience with Linux Mint since Helena, even now using at in a professional environment, to the advantage of my productivity (switched to my Mint partition just yesterday to complete something quickly, efficiently and cost free that I wasn’t able to manage easily on OS X Snow Leopard).
The idea of Gnome 3 has been so damned frightening I have barely even looked at screenshots, since I have been very happy using Gnome 2 as a refuge after the shift in direction at the “Other Place” (sorry KDE4ers – it’s just a statement of fact for me, not an ideological position).
But knowing how thorough, conscientious, and responsive to the community Clem and the LM team are, I think they will go a long way to making Gnome 3 a very positive experience for people like me, who have found Linux something that has indeed gone from being a maddening pain to being an enabler over the past few years.
I never thought I’d say this, but for the last 3 years I’ve used nothing but Slackware & Arch Linux and thought I was done with “beginner” distros, but I actually might install Mint on my desktop. I got Arch + Openbox on my laptop and that’s staying there (no reason to switch that out), but I do miss a sane Gnome interface and that looks like something I can use! I currently use Mate, and while it’s moving along very nicely it just isn’t quite there yet.
I’m kind of disappointed cause they don’t mention the possibility to use the unmodified GNOME-Shell, so people like me who really like it won’t be able to use it.
And for those who don’t know, Pinguy Linux is also working in a modified GNOME Shell just like Mint.
http://blog.pinguyos.com/post/12241043617/pinguy-os-11-10-pre-alpha…
Someone can correct me, but it seems to me that the only successful GUIs the Linux/FOSS people have come up with are clones of Apple and Microsoft designs (and their progenitors).
So how confident is the reader that any given distro (like Linux Mint) can break that trend and innovate their way to something beautiful and functional and popular? I’m very skeptical.
Look at the hate in this thread for KDE4 and GNOME3 and Unity! And now Linux Mint is going to bat! They’ll lose their heads.
they hate for a reason. If your computer was good and awesome, an update messed that up.. In windows lands they would even sue microsoft for ruining their “experience” (which has happened all over the world several times) Destroying lets say kde3 interface with the complete bullcrap that is plasma is just a piss in the face of the users, The apps are still good and QT is still awsome. A fork might not win out in the long run, but in this particular case i think it will. DeskMATE WILL be the gnome desktop in a year and gnome3 will be dead. The difference from Trinity vs KDE4 is alot alike but still not. Trinity does not benefit from qt4 and that is it’s downfall. There is no such limitations in G* land and gnome3 will be dead in a year or two unless they adapt what the people want.
Some people seems to forget how broken and buggy kicker was… Probably because they are members of the “It was better before” sects. Since KDE 4.2 (or even 4.1, but 4.2 is first really stable release), you can make your plasma desktop looks exactly like your KDE 3 one (even the icon mess on the desktop), and it is what I have been doing (but without the icon mess). And that is the real reason why trinity will not get any traction, except among members of the “It was better before” sect. And for those with hardware problem, yes it is true that KDE4 (and Gnome3) have issues with the (poor) quality of graphics driver, but at least with KDE4 once the animation are disabled, it works perfectly fine (and on a side note, there is no effect with KDE3 so it was not better before).
However, Gnome 3 is in a different situation, the whole shell is so rigid that you cannot customize it to make it work like you want it to work. It forces you to work the way the Gnome UI team wants you to work. Meaning that users who do not fit in that vision are left to look for alternative, or create for of Gnome 3 that will fit their need.
I started my Ubuntu, but I gave up on it after finding out that Mint was even more beginner friendly. I started my Mint journey on Elyssa and haven’t skipped a new version since. I have not had issues with Mint outside of the issues shared between it and Ubuntu (which a few problems between releases were fixed or prevented in Mint).
I still use Mint today. I also try Ubuntu’s newest releases and find reasons to reinstall Mint. Now Mint is taking Gnome 3 and making it better. Sure, it doesn’t solve everyone’s problems with Gnome 3, but it does bring out some potential of what Gnome 3 could be. I used Fedora 15 before and studied Gnome 3 myself. Other than ATI issues and lack of customization tools, I was fine with it for desktops, but Gnome 3 and my laptop don’t get along due to the fact that my touchpad heats up quickly and doesn’t respond correctly.
I’ve tried Unity and hated how I can’t access all of my applications as easy as other GUIs. Sure, I can go with XFCE or LXDE, but that doesn’t resolve the fact that distros still want to try Gnome 3. Do I dare say how I never got along with KDE?
This is a bold move made by the Mint team, and I am glad that they are doing it (as they usually do not make huge changes to their distro other than graphics and backend fixes.) I am also glad that they are going to attempt to make this usable rather than send this out on a set time. This “get it done right rather than send it on a fixed day” is what I like about Mint, and I hope more distros take this route. I’d sure hate to run into a major issue like I do in each Ubuntu release after 9.04.
I still run debian with AmiWM and as long as gtk app behave properly and is consistent with my main theme i could care less. The ubuntu style of having hard coded notifiers and other crap like that pisses me off though, and as Amiwm does not have a systray i use xfcetray to disable the functionality of apps using that… I find it impossible for some newer apps. STOP IT right now! if i do not want a tray or notification area i should not be forced to.
//Judgen Edin
I’m trying on ArchLinux. I *am* impressed. The Menu responds quite well, it’s very clean, and it FLOWS… a lesson to KDE, XFCE, LXDE and even GNOME2. I think GNOME 3 will be finally usable after Linux Mint is released. Number One now on Distrowatch.com!
I’m a big Gnome 2 user but with the changes going on, I guess I may need to find another environment to use. I’m currently using Mageia 1 with Gnome 2 and recently installed Salix OS with Xfce4. I must say I haven’t used xfce in quite awhile and it is looking very good and fast. I just may switch to that on all distros I use from now on. I have tried Gnome 3 livecd and imho, it is not too bad.
old gnome is creaky. when it works its magic. when it fails, it does so in fantastic fashion. Strip it apart, put it back together, maybe you’ve got something. Compiz is a mess. When it fails, it is miserable. Sadness everywhere. Meanwhile in CLI land all sorts of magical things are being created. For the average power user of linux, if he/she doesn’t enjoy the command line using modern linux desktops will not feel expressive.
Oh boy, is this the state of the Linux desktop nowadays?
First we have Gnome 3 which is an unusable mess. And no, sticking with Gnome 2 isn^aEUR~t a solution. Then, as Reduz said, we have Canonical making a desperate move to escape the Gnome 3 mess by creating their own UI, but without having the manpower needed to do it, and Linux Mint trying to ^aEURoefix^aEURoe Gnome 3, also without having the manpower to do it. I wish both of them best of luck, but i cannot count on it. Sure there is xfce, but most users wouldn^aEUR~t give it a second look. And KDE 4, well, we ^aEUR~ve bashed that already.
Anyway, it doesn^aEUR~t matter. For most newcomers (on whom Linux Desktop relies on in order to get off its 1% share), it^aEUR~s just Ubuntu, as whatever little novice user support and paid software there is out there is for Ubuntu. So if Ubuntu doesn^aEUR~t pan out, linux devs should prepare a grand exodus to Android (EeePad Transformer etc) so that they won^aEUR~t be the last guy leaving Linux Desktop, like the last guy leaving GEM.
Unlike Canonical, though, the Mint guys are doing it the smart way. Rather than try to build their own unique desktop, they’ve recognised that even if the Gnome 3 UI isn’t to everybody’s taste, the construction is basically sound.
And so their choice is to use shell extensions to adapt the Gnome Shell interface into something a little more traditional. It won’t stop those who just can’t stand the idea of a composited desktop and flashy graphics, but it *will* answer those who want a traditional “start menu”, and alt-tab behaviour, etc…
…that it’s easier than ever to essentially roll your own desktop environment, but nobody cares. Fluxbox is a better window manager than Metacity could ever dream of being, and you no longer need a full DE (or even X!) to get things like CPU power scaling, automounting of removable media, and easy wifi management. I switched back to Fluxbox after I realized that adding a second monitor at greater than 1024x768x24 would crash GNOME 3 – my netbook’s little GMA3150 just can’t composite a screen that big.
1% of user market share is what they say. But I doubt it. I know of many small companies who decided not to give Microsoft any money. Are they counted? All my family converted to Linux, are they counted? I guess not. There is no way to measure this with precision.
This is *really good stuff* by the Mint team!
The way that the Mint team have approached this is *exactly* how the Gnome devs should have done it.
Mint is focused on “how can we make things better for users?” Gnome is focused on “how can we make things better for *devs*?”
I don’t think there has ever been a more poorly-managed process than the Unity release, with Gnome’s take-it-or-leave-it attitude to users. Mint deserve all the kudos in the world for what they are doing.
Final comment – if, by some chance, the Mint work ends up folded into the Ubuntu codebase, that will prove that Mint’s approach was right all along.
1% of user market share is what they say”
Correct. The real numbers are even lower. If you take out from that 1% all the Fedoras, Archs, Gentoos etc that don’t stand a chance of being well received by the average consumer, the actual market share Ubuntu and Linux Mint have combined is even lower. After all, there is no ^aEURoeLinux^aEURoe or ^aEURoeGNU/Linux^aEURoe. Just ^aEURoeLinux-based OS^aEURoe. What people call “Linux” is a bunch of different semi-compatible OSes that simply have some common codebase in the kernel and basic utilities. So it would be more accurate to list the percentage of each “distro” (aka the percentage of each linux-based OS) seperately. Oh, and you personally might be a techie and have managed to convert your relatives to some linux distro, but for most people linux-based OSes are a no-no. Sorry, but that’s the way it is. You can pretend linux-based OSes have more than 1% share by pointing out to slashdot visitor statistics, but sadly it won’t make it a truth.
As regards the Mint vs Ubuntu thing, it’s sad to see the Linux Desktop being broken into too major “distros” (instead of one major “distro”). You have to choose between having a Software Center that has paid games and hence is actually worth visting (Ubuntu) and an environment that’s usable but doesn’t have a Software Center with paid games (Mint).
On the other hand, I am glad to see Canonical and their “release every 6 months even if it’s broken” method, to be replaced by Mint and it’s “when it’s done” method. If it’s possible to use Canonical’s software center with Mint, then Ubuntu should be abandoned IMO.
Edited 2011-11-07 12:27 UTC
[quote]You have to choose between having a Software Center that has paid games and hence is actually worth visting (Ubuntu) and an environment that’s usable but doesn’t have a Software Center with paid games (Mint).
On the other hand, I am glad to see Canonical and their “release every 6 months even if it’s broken” method, to be replaced by Mint and it’s “when it’s done” method. If it’s possible to use Canonical’s software center with Mint, then Ubuntu should be abandoned IMO.
[/quote]
Mint uses the same repositories and software packages as Ubuntu does. There’s nothing preventing someone from running the Software Centre in Mint.
Of course if Ubuntu was abandoned, as you suggest, then Mint wouldn’t have all that software as its base and wouldn’t be able to use Ubuntu’s Software Centre. Which makes me think you haven’t thought this all the way through.
I knew it was only a matter of time before Mint diverged from Ubuntu, even though their original pitch was that Mint was just Ubuntu with the codecs and other missing software filled in.
It will be interesting to see if in the future Mint continues to make more careful, wiser choices than Ubuntu.