Cinnamon Gnome-Shell Fork Releases Version 1.2 81
New submitter Novin writes with exciting news from the Cinnamon project. Quoting the release announcements: "Cinnamon 1.2 is out! All APIs and the desktop itself are now fully stable! I hope you'll enjoy the many new features, the desktop effect, desktop layouts, the new configuration tool, the applets, changes, bug fixes, and improvements that went into this release. This is a huge step forward for Cinnamon."
The release reintroduces desktop effects, fixes a slew of bugs, and introduces a new applet API (fixing a number of issues intrinsic to shell extensions).
Re:great to see a UI centered on most user needs (Score:3, Insightful)
More importantly, he doesn't want to add needless features simply out of developer restlessness.
Re:great to see a UI centered on most user needs (Score:5, Insightful)
Clem has a fantastic mindset compared to many UI developers today, he knows what most users want, he actually reads user forums and responds with attitude of user experience being important. He'll make GNOME3 a useful base desktop
It still has this weird thing about UIs of late (not just in Linux, Windows is doing the same thing), where they fix the menu size regardless of how many entries you have, and then provide you with a scroll bar if you have entries over the menu size. I don't get it. Why is the menu going up to only 1/3 of my screen? If I have all that vertical screen space still available, USE IT.
Scrolling is a necessary evil. Whenever it can be avoided, it should be.
Re:Enjoy your.... (Score:5, Insightful)
One advantage of Linux is you have full access to any turd you wish to polish, versus being stuck with someone else's fecal offerings!
Re:great to see a UI centered on most user needs (Score:5, Insightful)
I noticed the other day he's also now listed as a MATE developer. He must be doing more than just about anyone else to bring our 'sane interfaces back', one way or another. Cinnamon looks an awful lot like what Unity should have been, an alternative shell for Gnome 3 that doesn't alienate the established user base. Neither Canonical nor the core Gnome 3 team seem to have fully realised the enormous power of natural selection in the Linux 'ecosystem' (apologies for the appalling term). MS can get away wih imposing stuff like the infamous Ribbon because they have a largely captive audience. Linux users are quite happy to jump ship at short notice rather than switching to a new and (in many cases) unwanted 'desktop paradigm'. The operating system should adapt to the user, not the other way around. I suspect Mint has a bright future.
Re:Just technical question (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, no one forbids him to take GNOME Panel and support it. GNOME devs care about GNOME libs and GNOME Shell. But they don't deny anyone keeping legacy software alive if someone says and does so. Trust me, I know these guys.
Re:What about the Classic Menu? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh that I could live with! The problem is the last I heard, "Fallback mode" was scheduled to be removed so I never bothered with it. Are you saying this is not the case? Because if it is intended to stick around I can always find a distro doing Gnome 3 and start using the "Fallback mode" without any issues.
The issues come in for me when the developers suddenly decide that everyone has to quit liking what worked well before and what was actually the reason they had any users at all because the new shiny is the now the ONE TRUE WAY....
Sadly enough that attitude seems to be infecting the whole software world of late and there seems nothing end users can do about it besides stick with the previous (unsupported) versions or move on to something else.
--bornagainpenguin