MATE To Make It Into Debian Repositories 152
sfcrazy writes "Fans of the MATE desktop environment, which is a fork of Gnome 2, will be happy to know that MATE is scheduled to be included in the official Debian repositories. Early 2012, it was requested that MATE be included in said repositories, and almost 2 years later, it appears we're almost there."
Re:Debian?? (Score:4, Interesting)
Ubuntu is hardly a successor to Debian. It's more of a hanger on. Debian will be around long after Canonical goes bankrupt.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
More the bowdlerized version.
Best wishes,
Bob
Re:Debian?? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Let's call Ubuntu the v******ed version of linux?
Re: (Score:1)
"Debian will be around long after Canonical goes bankrupt."
you mean pumped and dumped by MS.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Debian?? (Score:5, Funny)
How many times will they check MATE before it's done?
Re:Debian?? (Score:5, Funny)
Quit being such a pawn.
Re: (Score:2)
So I won?
Re: (Score:1)
You may check multiple times, but you only check MATE once.
Re:Debian?? (Score:5, Funny)
"mongo only pawn, in game of life"
Re:Debian?? (Score:5, Insightful)
MATE is definitely not "mainstream". The mainstream follows hot trends, like the tablet-ification and dumbing-down of desktop GUIs. MATE is the opposite of this. MATE is an admission that the desktop metaphor was already perfected 10 or 15 years ago, and that what we really need is a stable, polished, feature-complete implementation of it. Cinnamon and XFCE are in the same camp, with cinnamon opting to use newer technology to achieve a similar result.
MATE going into the debian repository is a great thing. It gives credit to the notion that certain design concepts and certain software, although "dated", is so practical, sensible, and useful that it's worth keeping around for years to come.
Re:Debian?? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's going a little bit far to say it was perfected 10-15 years ago. I'd assert that it is more a recognition that the attempts to go beyond what we had 10-15 years ago have taken us in the wrong direction.
Re: (Score:1)
The "metaphor" was perfected 10-15 years ago, not the implementation. The actual implementation, IMO, was never actually perfected (as in "perfect"), but gnome 2 and kde 3 came the closest, before they both went off the deep end (when they were taken over by younger, more "visionary" maintainers). MATE is a blessing in that they strive to preseve the accomplishments of gnome 2, rather than tossing them out with the garbage (as the gnome 3 developers did). Cinnamon is a blessing in that they are following a
Re:Debian?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Abandoning old ideas as 'dated' is a mark of the 'planned obselescence' business model that much of modern industry has adopted: effectively moving from the 'buy stuff' model to the 'rent stuff and surrender control' model, that is good for business, bad for consumers, but easy to force if government regulation doesn't stop this market degeneracy.
Re: (Score:3)
You've got me confused. Is there a new world order or something? When did Windows adopt bash? It's true, I can't even begin to imagine using Windows without Cygwin, but Cygwin is not Windows.
Agree 100% with everything else.
Re: (Score:1)
I think we have different definitions of "perfect". The metaphor will always have room to evolve for the positive, even if people keep failing to actually make it happen.
Re: (Score:2)
The actual implementation, IMO, was never actually perfected (as in "perfect"), but gnome 2 and kde 3 came the closest, before they both went off the deep end (when they were taken over by younger, more "visionary" maintainers).
What the heck are you talking about? KDE4 is no different from KDE3 as far as the metaphor that it tries to implement, except that it adds some extra (optional) features such as "Activities" and indexing. KDE4 uses a totally different codebase, yes, but it still works pretty much t
Re: (Score:3)
I'm not too worked up over KDE4's bloat given the cheapness of RAM and disk space, but KDE4 lacks one simple thing. There should be a single simple option for the user to set: "Give me KDE3 look and feel all the way, but with the KDE4/Qt4 improved codebase plus the obvious underpinning improvements". I.e., it would get rid of the compositing stuff, Plasma stuff, animation stuff - a plain desktop as folder, plus panels. Basically a quick, simply way to disable all the stuff which is utterly pointless to the
Re: (Score:2)
I.e., it would get rid of the compositing stuff, Plasma stuff, animation stuff - a plain desktop as folder, plus panels
Removing compositing would make it slower on most systems, since you'd have to do everything on the CPU instead of offloading it to the GPU. You can already disable animation and other stuff pretty easily. But you're right, they could use a few buttons to select certain feature sets (one for minimalist desktop, one for everything-and-the-kitchen-sink, one for Windows XP/7-like UI, one for
Re: (Score:2)
So what's so hard about having to do it in 4-5 clicks total?
Click activities, click the one that says something like "Desktop with icons" activity[*]
right click "K" menu, click "use old style menus"
click "K" menu > settings > system settings click the either desktop or appearance icon ( I forget which the compositing stuff is under ).
??????
Done, AKA profit.
[*] at least for 4.10.x there is a desktop w/ icons activity, not sure when that one was introduced.
Re: (Score:2)
KDE4 has finally evolved into something not terrible. But it's not even approximately as good as was KDE3. It it were, I'd be using it. (I tried for a few months recently. It was OK, but inferior to Mate, where I rated KDE3 as superior to Gnome2.) Currently I'm using xfce, which is pretty good, but not quite as good (for my purposes) as was Gnome2, which, as I stated, was inferior to KDE3. It's been several months since I tried Cinnamon, but the screen shots I see don't appear to be as good as Mate.
It
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
In the Linux world, there were traditionally four "mainstream" desktops
Gnome, KDE, XFCE, and LXDE.
MATE and Cinnamon both have a sizable following and intrest. Its not like we are talking about icewm, or some obsecure window manager here.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You are mistaken. XFCE (although I use it myself) has certainly never been mainstream, and LXDE (are you kidding?) has never even been on the radar. Here in the linux world, although there are many GUIs to choose from, gnome and KDE are the only two that have ever remotely qualified as "mainstream" (and maybe FVWM if you want to go way back). This is coming from someone who has used linux almost exclusively since '97, and has seen the entire evolution with his own eyes.
Re: (Score:2)
Now that Gnome 2 is no more, there is chance that MATE and/or XFCE get mainstream audience. The today decision is a step in that direction.
Re: (Score:2)
I think XFCE is somewhat mainstream, i.e. you had Xubuntu 7.04, debian ISO with XFCE etc., maybe it was hardly a common desktop or default desktop but the best known after KDE and Gnome. (not counting FVWM, twm, *box etc. as desktop)
LXDE though is quite a recent desktop in comparison.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Like qtile [qtile.org]?
You'd have to like using tiling wms though.
Don't know about forth, but Xmonad uses haskell. Yet again, you'd need to like using tiling wms though :)
Re: (Score:1)
ad tabletification: I'm running mate with debian testing for over a year now - on a tablet (yes a real one with i5 and wacom multitouch), compared with gnome I have to say it's so much better for tablets, the fancy gnome overlays might look shiny, but since touch gestures have only started to work recently, the idea of getting to all the programs without a bloated dock wasn't (and still isn't) feasable without an additional mouse, which makes the touch kinda pointless. and since most configs have disappeare
Re:Debian?? (Score:4, Informative)
If debian where to go away tommorow, Ubuntu would go away in 6 months, because they still pull packages from debian to make their new versions.
Also, debian runs on a wide variety of hardware Ubuntu won't run on, in fact one of the widest variety and its a better general purpose OS.
Also, Debian has the lead market share in the server world, so I'd love for you to tell all the companies who run debian-stable servers they need to ditch them for ubuntu-server.
http://w3techs.com/blog/entry/debian_is_now_the_most_popular_linux_distribution_on_web_servers
I think you've lost track of reality. You don't even know what a hipster is.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a little more complex than that.
It's true that there is an automatic flow of packages from debian to ubuntu and no automatic flow in the opposite direction but it is also true that a lot of the more radical stuff (multiarch, "modern" init system) happens in ubuntu first because it takes debian so long to argue about the details. It's also true that a fair number of core packages in debian are maintained by canonical employees.
I think ubuntu would certainly be seriously weakened without debian and would
Re: (Score:2)
I am also pretty sure that Ubuntu takes most of its build's from debian-unstable, then tries and tweak them.
As far as init systems got, Ubuntu is the only one using upstart, and most likely will stay that way. Everyone else is going to red-hat developed systemd, to
Re:Debian?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, it's true. Debian is part of Ubuntu's ecosystem. Just like oxygen is part of my ecosystem. If I don't get adequate oxygen, I'll die. If Ubuntu doesn't get adequate Debian, then Ubuntu will die. The revers is not true, of course. If oxygen doesn't get any of me, oxygen won't die - nor will Debian die for lack of Ubuntu.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Linux Mint is Ubuntu based, and I don't use it. Linux Mint Debian Edition is - naturally enough - Debian based, and I use it. It's sweet. And, no, you can't mix the two. Adding a Ubuntu repository to your LMDE installation may work for awhile, but it's going to wreak havoc on your software manager eventually.
Re: (Score:2)
Its just a set of remixes, and they make the Cinnamon Desktop.
So think about Linux Mint, Mate and cinnamon as simply the "Ubuntu MATE and cinnamon remix", as there are already remixes for all the other major desktops.
A user interface is just personal prefrence. Lots of people don't like Ubuntu's Unity. So there is Kubuntu, Gubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, and Mint.
Mint also makes a debian remix as well as the famous ubuntu remixes.
Re: (Score:2)
His Red Hat bashing is also inane. Red Hat makes things the rest of the open source community uses, like Gnome, network manager, systemd, and is a big time contributor to the linux kernel. Cannocial is not. Cannocial makes things not widely used outside cannocial, not because they are clo
Re: (Score:2)
Ubuntu is a PR machine.
"We'll be converting to foo, we'll be rolling our own bar".
And where does it, on its web pages, say Ubuntu runs Linux?
For all we care (we don't), they might as well run an MS kernel.
And I don't mean MS as in M. Shuttleworth.
Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)
"The backlash against Debian isn't that it's too mainstream. It's that they're making decisions that compromise privacy (Amazon search integrated into desktop search by default) and usability (Unity). Also, the plan to develop Mir instead of using Wayland as the replacement for X was a bit of "What are you doing Ubuntu? Ubuntu? Stahp." moment."
The backlash against Ubuntu isn't that it's too mainstream. It's that they're making decisions that compromise privacy (Amazon search integrated into desktop search b
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I think you mean Ubuntu, because Debian isn't doing that.
Re: (Score:1)
The backlash against Debian isn't that it's too mainstream. It's that they're making decisions that compromise privacy (Amazon search integrated into desktop search by default) and usability (Unity).
I think you may have may have had a little brain fart there.
G'Day (Score:4, Funny)
Mate
Re: (Score:2)
Mint!
Re: (Score:2)
Not Minty at all - more Sabayon.
https://www.sabayon.org/article/well-hello-mate [sabayon.org]
http://www.cookthink.com/reference/2466/What_is_sabayon [cookthink.com]
Re:A problem (Score:5, Interesting)
> A problem with Linux in general is there is simply too much choice and no apparent standardization.
Yet the thing you are screeching about right now is the very essence of "consistency" in terms of the principle that "computer interfaces should be consistent". This project is a response to others running off the rails and trying to follow the latest trend no matter how absurd it is.
MATE is what truly conforms to formal academic notions of proper UI design. So do the standard Unix shells.
MATE will be less of a shock to people used to the last 15 years of Windows interfaces. It will be less confusing than the flavor of the month from Ubuntu, Microsoft, or Apple.
Re: (Score:2)
it seems that academic notions of proper UI design are aimed at satisfying those who only ever have 1 or 2 applications open at one time.
And academics wonder why people accuse them of living in ivory towers detached from reality...
(There are more concrete issues visible on http://mate-desktop.org/gallery/1.6/caja.png too, but who am I to argue for or against a particular window manager - I use DWM for pity's sake.)
Re: (Score:3)
Actually, Mate is designed quite well for people who use multiple applications at the same time. If you'll look at those images again, you'll see the lower right hand corner of the screen has four virtual desktops iconified on the panel. I routinely use three of the default four. Further, I have two monitors, so switching between those three desktops means that I am working with six screens. Mate is as good as, or maybe better than, Gnome or KDE for multitaskers.
The fact is, those screenshots were taken
Re: (Score:2)
Joking aside. My g/f isn't happy with *anything*, maybe Mate would press her buttons (as long as it gets to Debian backports). I think she's stuck on Sawfish at the moment.
Some people like more and more and more features. Some people like the familiarity of something that has its roots way back. Some people like things to just
Re:A problem (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to use GNOME 2 & found that the GNOME devs kept dropping useful features, then GNOME 3 came along and was essentially a triumph of FASHION over FUNCTIONALITY. I initially fled to xfce, now I use MATE.
I have 30" monitor, I have 35 virtual desktops of which about half are in use. An unused virtual desktop is blank with a bland background, and my 2 highly customised panels are always hidden unless I need to access them.
GNOME 3 is very cluttered. and gets in the way of easy use. GNOME devs seems to think that what they want is more important than letting me do things the way I find best - they have Apple's disease! I am glad that I was not supporting clients with GNOME 2 - as the change from a sort of working Desktop Environment, to the total disaster of GNOME 3 was the most depressing & annoying change I've ever had to suffer in Linux.
MATE started as a clone of GNOME 2 with the useful parts added back in, but now they are adding new features in there own right.
Re:A problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I design UIs occasionally. What iconography would you suggest replace the floppy disk for save? The down arrow and some bits? No, That's download. Why all the bucking for naught? Must technology be averse to its own history to the extent that we can't just have a beloved memorable data store remain the symbol for storage, simply because tweens haven't ever used one and Sony stopped making them? I still use floppies daily but I make OSs as a hobby, so admittedly I'm an extreme outlier. Most folks don't know what a hard drive looks like. They equate optical disks to burning and playing media. I've still got a tape drive for my big backups, but icons sporting a cassette or reel-to-reel are confusing and more out dated than the floppy -- The grand ol' floppy who's drive access sounds heralded the explosion of accessible computing for humanity.
When holographic Crystal Storage becomes the new de-facto storage standard a gleaming spinning cube will be a suitable iconic replacement representation. Until then, you get to see a floppy -- Because nothing else makes any damn sense, and words take up more space than icons.
Re: (Score:2)
What iconography would you suggest replace the floppy disk for save?
How about an image of a silver platter with an arrow pointing downwards at it? Now obviously, this is already starting to be obsolete with the rise of SSDs, but it's better than an image of a storage medium that no one's used in over a decade. Heck, even when people still used floppies in the 90s, they generally saved stuff to their hard drive, not to floppies, so the icon didn't even make that much sense back then.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
How about an image of a silver platter with an arrow pointing downwards at it?
That sounds like it would just look like it either means "burn to disc" or "download to something", neither of which would make sense as saving.
it's better than an image of a storage medium that no one's used in over a decade
The number of people that have even the vaguest idea of what the inside of a hard disk looks like is probably significantly smaller than the number that knows that floppy=save.
You know what else is obsolete? Roman numerals, and yet their use on clock faces hasn't been particularly problematic for anybody in the centuries since the system got replaced with something
Re: (Score:2)
That sounds like it would just look like it either means "burn to disc" or "download to something", neither of which would make sense as saving.
If you think about it, "download" and "save" are really the same thing. The only difference is that "download" usually refers to copying something from the internet somewhere and saving to local NV storage, whereas "save" (as seen, for instance, in an office program) usually means to copy from memory to local NV storage.
The number of people that have even the vague
Re: (Score:2)
Anyway, I'm not saying that there isn't a better option, just that we haven't come across anything that sticks yet,
I definitely agree with this, as I said before when I said that no one's come up with a sensible replacement for it yet. You correctly pointed out the problem with my platter icon idea: it looks too much like an optical disk. The other poster here had the right idea: when you save to disk, you're really saving a "snapshot" (and even in the floppy days, you didn't want to actually save it to a
Re: (Score:1)
... and words take up more space than icons.
So why not make every single icon just different colored blocks the like MS Paint "select a color" window and use the mouseover pop-up text to describe the function in detail? After all, you're just differing function selectors by placing a cute reminder logo on them.
Of course I'm joking. But really, I'm also kinesthetic -- I don't "DO" visuals -- so please make sure (but how?) those icons look like something.
I've used programs in decades past, and even though I *KNEW* exactly what the icon did I s
Re:A problem (Score:4, Interesting)
How about the word 'Save'? Why does everything have to be an icon?
On the news about MATE, that's good to see. Fwiw, I dumped Ubuntu for Lubuntu (LXDE) as soon as I saw Unity. While I think the water's a bit muddy (MATE, LXDE, XFCE...) it's still nice to see the options there.
Re: (Score:1)
Personally, I think the "save" icon should be a picture of Jesus. Perhaps in a full soccer outfit, standing in front of a goal.
"Copy" should naturally be the Borg cube. "Paste" should be a picture of Mr. Ed. "Delete" should be a Dalek.
Pardon me, I have to go design a new custom icon set. Thanks slashdot.
Re: (Score:2)
Brilliant!
Re: (Score:2)
Though I 100% agree with you, you also have to account for the various languages of the world. I used this site: http://www.nicetranslator.com/ [nicetranslator.com], selected every language (including Klingon!) and translated "save". Now since I am not a linguist, save might not be used the same way in each language so this isn't very accurate. But if you look, some languages have more than four characters, and as many as 11 or so. So your UI elements would have to resize which may interfere with the layout and cause overlap or
Re: (Score:2)
What iconography would you suggest replace the floppy disk for save? The down arrow and some bits? No, That's download.
Please explain how "download" is different from "save" from a naive computer user's point of view. In both cases, you have an object somewhere that can be considered transient / temporary, and you hope that by carrying out the operation you're transferring it to a more permanent storage medium.
Re: (Score:2)
I design UIs occasionally. What iconography would you suggest replace the floppy disk for save? The down arrow and some bits?
Use a cylinder for crisesake, which is what IT used to symbolize secondary storage before the floppy disk. Its abstract enough to encompass different physical storage technologies while still having a historical grounding. You could have a smaller cylinder with a USB symbol or connector to mean removable storage. You could also show the cylinder 'filled' according to the allocated space on the volume.
My new Thinkpad still uses the cylinder for the HD activity light on its bezel.
This really, really is not ha
Re: (Score:2)
What iconography would you suggest replace the floppy disk for save?
<Bob> DAMMIT! Where is the save button?!
<Jake> Click the Jesus button.
<Bob> Huh?
<Jake> Jesus saves.
Re: (Score:3)
How hard is it to change the frigging icon? MOST people who haunt slashdot are capable of switching out an icon. If we were on Yahoo, or Twitter, or Facebook, I might expect to see a complaint about an "outdated" icon. But, this is SLASHDOT!!
It would be interesting to take a poll, to see how many slashdot readers can do simple tasks, such as substituting an icon. I had that capability waaaaay back, on Windows 3.11. I'm fairly sure that I could have done it on DOS 3.1, but I'm not quite certain - I can'
Re: (Score:1)
One of the neat things about having relatively powerful computers is that we can have standards in infrastructure while being able to tailor the interface to reflect our preferences. So, for example, I can use imap for e-mail, but have a wide variety of interfaces available. I use a full feature interface on a desktop (could be icedove; could be mutt), but a lighter interface on an Android device (K-9 mail). So, standardization across users is very well in its place, but its place isn't across the user
Re: (Score:2)
A problem with Linux in general is there is simply too much choice and no apparent standardization.
No matter which desktop you choose, your apps will work. That's standard enough. The choice of desktops is one of Linux's greatest strengths. I can make my desktop work they way I want it to, without interfering with your ability to make your desktop work the way you want it.
Ubuntu has gone off to create its own standard, and the one the world outside of open source software will see as the defacto Linux d
Re: (Score:2)
Linux has crap adoption outside of open source circles precisely because there is no (seemingly) standardized desktop for business.
Each business can set its own standards for what desktop provides the tools their employees need.
That would be a training nightmare. One reason Windows, and to some degree OS/X is popular in business is that it's literally "train once at the first place you work for"; after that the only "training" needed for new hires with experience is showing them which icons they need to click on are.
Contrast that to the way things would have to be one if business adopted Linux, with each having a customized desktop, you would have to do much more in depth training for each new hire. Where does company X think the
Re: (Score:2)
A problem with Linux in general is there is simply too much choice and no apparent standardization. Ubuntu has gone off to create its own standard, and the one the world outside of open source software will see as the defacto Linux desktop. This is good and bad. Linux has crap adoption outside of open source circles precisely because there is no (seemingly) standardized desktop for business. Yes, we all know of the stories of some Brazilian, German, and Spanish government entities who have successfully switched over to Linux. This is rare and will continue to be rare unless there is a perceived stable, standardizzed desktop offering. Like or not, Canonical and Ubuntu offer this standard, and there is nothing wrong with it.
I'm not a open source greybeard position stickler who thinks everything has to be done based on decrees from the people who are as far away from the real world pragmatism as possible. Ubuntu does what it was intended to do: make Linux approachable and easy to adopt by about anyone.
The root cause of this is that a public expectation has been established - rightly or wrongly - that Linux == $0.00. As a result, everybody who tried selling Linux CDs the way Microsoft sells Windows CDs/DVDs had to give up pretty quickly - Mandrake, Corel, Caldera, what have you. As a result, the only niche for Linux ended up being servers - something filled by the likes of Red Hat, SUSE, Oracle and previously VA Linux. None of them offer distros that are standardized. Canonical came along and made Lin
Re: (Score:3)
Oh please.
First off, there's really only one Linux kernel version that distros are using. Except for some weird embedded stuff, no one sticks with older or odd branches of the Linux kernel, and they generally use the latest thing available. The only differences between distros would be because they don't all release releases at the exact same time.
Secondly, there may be "thousands" of distros, but only a handful that actually have a lot of users and get a lot of mindshare and support: Ubuntu, Fedora, Mand
Re: (Score:3)
This is rare and will continue to be rare unless there is a perceived stable, standardizzed desktop offering.
You mean like Microsoft's new "standardized" desktop offering, which is a complete sea change from their previous version?
With Linux, you don't have that problem. No one can force you to adopt a crappy new desktop offering when you're a Linux user; you always have the ability to keep using what you're using now, or change distros to one that suits you better. Users happy with Gnome2 are not forced
Re: (Score:2)
Well, hello, Mr Ballmer!
A problem with Linux in general is there is simply too much choice and no apparent standardization.
The problem with cars is too many choices and no apparent standardization; look, all different wheel sized, places to put the battery, seating differences, where the various controls are, etc.
You're a moron.
As to standardization, put the crack pipe down. Microsoft and Apple are the ones who won't follow standards (MS in the OS and Apple in the hardware).
Linux has crap adoption outside o
Awesome! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
I've been using LightDM myself, with MATE on Debian, and it works flawlessly.
Re: (Score:2)
No, not awesome [naquadah.org], MATE!
Current status? (Score:5, Informative)
The original article seems to be Slashdotted (hey, can we still do that?!), but from the MATE blog:
http://mate-desktop.org/blog/2013-11-08-debian-mate-packaging-team/ [mate-desktop.org]
"The MATE Team is very happy to say hello to the new Debian MATE Packaging Team, that is working hard to get MATE included into the next release of Debian...First packages are already in the repositories and there are many others in ftp-master NEW queue."
which links to:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=708385#31 [debian.org]
"The plan is to provide MATE inside the Debian archive before the end of the year (if the FTP master time will find enough time to review our uploads)."
Of course if you don't mind using the upstream repository, you can install it right now:
http://wiki.mate-desktop.org/download [mate-desktop.org]
good news (Score:3)
This is good news. GNOME2/MATE is a very nicely evolved traditional desktop, that I am sure has more person hours of testing than all the other linux desktops put together (being the default in most major distros for years).
Having it in the official repos, saves having to hunt down the addresses of the repos when installing. A strength of debian is how broad the repos are. Thanks for the hard work folks.
better later than never... (Score:1)
Good (Score:2)
Gnome 3.8 Classic Mode (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Firefox, probably not. ICEWeasel, absolutely possible.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
If you want a quick-to-adapt distro, try Ubuntu. It was so quick to adapt that it quickly adapted a whole new desktop environment as default overnight once during a routine system update.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Living on Debian Time (Score:4, Informative)
The problem in this instance is that MATE is basically a fork of GNOME which was already in the repository. It's my understanding that a lot of stuff had to be sorted out to prevent clashes and to ensure that Debian doesn't end up with a bunch of garbage packages that will have to be maintained for the next Debian release.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What the real problem is is that GNOME 3 is different enough from GNOME 2 that it should have been called something else entirely.
Re: (Score:2)
It's my understanding that a lot of stuff had to be sorted out to prevent clashes
I'd like a citation on that, please.
My understanding is that GNOME 2.x clashes with GNOME 3.x, so right at the beginning of the MATE project they worked very hard to rename everything. "libgnome" became "libmate" and so on, specifically so that MATE would not clash with GNOME 3.x. The MATE guys did all this work years ago, so clashing never was a problem for MATE and isn't now.
In further support of this idea, I will remind yo
Re: (Score:2)
The nemo file manager could be an interesting option, it's a fork of nautilus 3.x, precisely to add the missing stuff in and improve on it ; it is Cinnamon's file manager. It uses GTK3. So it might be less disruptive than caja in a Gnome 3 environment.
Re: (Score:2)
Reply to myself,
Cinnamon's backends have been moving away from Gnome 3, been forked and renamed. Previously Cinnamon stuff of a particular version would need Gnome 3 stuff from a particular version, possibly held back a notch in some cases.. It's probably safer to try the Nemo from Cinnamon 2.0, which ought to not conflict with Gnome 3. I didn't try any of this.
I did kind of the reverse thing before, using nemo on Mate. It was a bit of a mess (two file managers fighting for the right to render the desktop i
Re: (Score:2)
I could have been mistaken... maybe he was planning to use Nemo rather than Caja. That would make more sense; Nemo is a fork of the 3.x version of Nautilus and should fit better with a GNOME 3.x desktop.
Last time I tried Cinnamon the basics worked but the whole user experience was very rough. Like, I had to make a string of format codes to get the clock to display what I wanted, drag-and-drop didn't work to put launchers on a panel, that sort of basic thing.
Are you using Cinnamon? Have they improved the
Re: (Score:2)
I'm using Mate or Xfce, Cinnamon would be heavier in disk accesses and ram for me and especially I want to run a desktop that can run on all computers not just mine. So I run a 2D desktop.
I read the Mint news and it's progressing, for instance in Mint 14 they made a unified control panel in Cinnamon instead of having two control panels (a Gnome 3 one and a Cinnamon one) ; Cinnamon 2.0 brings the bigger changes. Overview with screenshots here http://segfault.linuxmint.com/2013/10/cinnamon-2-0-released/ [linuxmint.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Done. I'm using on a RHEL box, but I install from sources. You don't have to wait so much if you just learn to use your computer.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah because everyone has the time to fuck around compiling stuff and dealing with update nightmares.
Package managers are there for a reason.
Re: (Score:2)
That's a feature.
Any stability the Internet (TM) might boast off -- that's Debian right there.