MATE Desktop 1.2 Released 194
An anonymous reader writes "For those of you who still feel GNOME 2 is the best desktop environment, but don't want stick to old distros, MATE is a fork of GNOME 2, with all the names changed to avoid clashes with GNOME 3. Version 1.2 brings fixes, but also new features such as undo/redo in the file manager."
This release features better freedesktop standards integration, adds a few missing utilities, and merges new features into the file manager. The project has a new wiki; the roadmap has a few details on future goals, including porting things to Gtk 3 and using bits and pieces of modern GNOME 3 infrastructure where appropriate.
Doomed, try cinnamon. (Score:2, Interesting)
This approach is doomed to failure. The better approach is Mint's Cinnamon project. There they maintain a gnome2 like desktop environment, but it rests on gnome3. There are ppa's (https://launchpad.net/~merlwiz79/+archive/cinnamon-ppa) that let you install it into official Ubuntu distros, so no need to install a full-on mint distro. It would be even better if canonical moved these packages into universe or something.
Great (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What's the point? (Score:1, Interesting)
Why not improve the gnome classic desktop from gnome 3 instead? This zombie-gnome2 effort seems like a waste of time to me.
Then don't contribute to it. Some people watch NASCAR in their spare time. There are plenty of ways people "waste time" these days -- as far as "wastes" go, this is by far and away one of the least wasteful, even if there are others that would be even less so IMHO.
Re:More Linux fragmentation... (Score:5, Interesting)
Are you forgetting about Cinnamon? It's basically the same thing but starting from gnome3 and working back to gnome2's appearance. As opposed to mate's starting with gnome2's code base, and working towards gnome3's while keeping the apperance the same.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/01/25/1459225/cinnamon-gnome-shell-fork-releases-version-12 [slashdot.org]
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why not improve the gnome classic desktop from gnome 3 instead? This zombie-gnome2 effort seems like a waste of time to me.
Can you put a weather widget on the top bar on Gnome3 Classic? How about a CPU temp sensor? How about a graph that shows CPU, RAM, swap, and network usage? Maybe a sensor that shows the CPU speed for each core with the ability to change them to ondemand or performace? Can you put the taskbar on bottom bar? Can you put just a gnome foot (start button) on the bottom left like Windows and the full menu on top (Gnome-foot, Places, System)?
The last time I tried Gnome3, none of these things were possible. These were not an option on Gnome3 Classic either. I want my old Gnome2 back, not the "look" of Gnome2 stuck on top of Gnome3. I don't want "New Coke" in an "Old Coke" can.
Forks make me think (Score:5, Interesting)
Now we have MATE from GNOME v2 as a form of dissatisfaction of v3.
We already had Trinity [trinitydesktop.org] forked from KDE v3.5.
Then there's Razor-Qt [razor-qt.org] as "something almost completely new".
And the pletora of "alternative" desktops we all love: XFCE, LXDE, etc.etc. [wikipedia.org]
Is it actually a problem of fragmentation, or is it that some projects after a few years (and some amounts of donated money) just go into technology decline?
I personally tend towards the second option.
Re:More Linux fragmentation... (Score:5, Interesting)
The first Gnome 3 dev who has guts enough to say "dudes, we fscked up this one, bad" will get my respect.
He would be a hero. A voice of reason. A voice of intelligence. A voice of sanity.
The sad thing is, he would be shunned and likely ejected. The Gnome usability experts have all, already told the Gnome 3 developers they are fucking up very badly. The gnome 3 developers told them they didn't have the intelligence to understand their visionary thinking. In other words, according to the gnome 3 developers, if you disagree with the gnome 3 developers, you are an idiot. This is not hyperbole. This is straight from the mailing list. Its disgusting.
At this point in time, either you've drank the koolaid and have long since turned off your brain, growing like a mushroom, or left gnome 3 development. Otherwise, according to the gnome 3 developers, you're an idiot and not likely unqualified to contribute to the project.
It isn't going to happy because it already happen, in mass, and the gnome 3 developers labeled them idiots.