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Linux Mint 12 “Lisa” released

blog.linuxmint.com

41–50 of 67 posts

Re: Linux Mint 12 “Lisa” released

#41

honest question: why are so many people hating on unity? is it the launcher bar?

After Gnome2 was discontinued, Canonical _could_ have listened to their current users and instead of Unity, developed something similar to Mint's MGSE. But Canonical suddendly decided to discard their current target group, desktop users, which made Ubuntu popular, and suddenly switch everything to tablet users. People hate on Unity for two reasons: 1. Because they feel betrayed by Canonical for switching to another t…

I'm pretty sure these tablet complaints are revisionist history. Unity has been in development for years, long before the iPad started tablet mania.

Re: Linux Mint 12 “Lisa” released

#42
post #14

honest question: why are so many people hating on unity? is it the launcher bar?

Some people get used to a workflow. They have an environment set up just how they like. All of a sudden Gnome release Gnome 3 - which breaks a lot of that workflow, and also means that people wanting to stay at Gnome 2.x are going to drift slowly into dependancy hell. And Shuttleworth plays his benign dictator card, saying he doesn't care what the community thinks, they're wrong, and Unity is the way forward. Unity a…

XFCE is great. I switched to xubuntu and loving it. It might be lacking. but I find it far more enjoyable to use than Unity or gnome3. I tried to use both gnome3 and unity. and both had me very frustrated.

Re: Linux Mint 12 “Lisa” released

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Any action requires a hilarious number of clicks to get done. like what? again, i'm not challenging you, i'm genuinely wondering.

The author is referring to the fact that the taskbar/dock in Unity doesn't offer the same affordances as the old Gnome2 taskbar. For example, in Ubuntu 11.04, there was no way to open a new terminal from the dock. You had to click on the terminal icon, then click File->New Terminal. As someone who routinely opens a number of terminals for various tasks, that one regression was a source of significant slowdowns. In ad…

Can't you just middle click the icon in the dock? Middle click launches a new instance of the app instead of bringing the current instance to the foreground.

Re: Linux Mint 12 “Lisa” released

#44
The push to Unity made me try alternate window managers. I've ended up sticking with Awesome, which is a pretty sweet tiling window manager. More minimalistic than it needs to be, but still, the core functionality is great. I have multiple workspaces with different tiling schemes for different tasks - one for general purpose, one for terminal hacking (spiralling terminal windows), one for bug fixing (side by side windows w/bug tracker & Emacs), and one for prolonged development (full screen Emacs with a little terminal for building)

Re: Linux Mint 12 “Lisa” released

#45
post #4

The Mint team deserves big kudos for striving to maintain a Gnome-panel-like desktop experience. IMO both Gnome-shell and Unity are arrogant usability nightmares; thankfully the Mint team is still keeping traditional usability alive in the Gnome environment.

The bigger point here appears to be the extensibility of GNOME shell. If I read the announcement right, the Mint desktop is GNOME3, but using extensions to create a more GNOME2-like experience.

The JavaScript environment GNOME3 was written in could lead to lots of UX experimentation like this, at least once it has better documentation.

Re: Linux Mint 12 “Lisa” released

#46
post #35

honest question: why are so many people hating on unity? is it the launcher bar?

For me, broken Alt+Tab that switches applications instead of windows is a non-starter. And the top application menu bar. The rest is OK and I can learn/adapt.

For me its the menu bar on the top of the screen except for libreoffice. On a 1920 by 1080 its a bit of a trek to the top of the screen from a small Gedit window.

The rest I can deal with, I tend toward 'end user' tasks plus a couple of ssh sessions, and about 10 applications over four virtual desktops.

Hibernate works so I can keep the setup between sessions.

Re: Linux Mint 12 “Lisa” released

#47
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you used it? The principal thing is that it's different and offers less customization than gnome2 and even gnome3 with gnome-shell. Any action requires a hilarious number of clicks to get done. These sorts of things are self-evident when you've attempted to use Unity for any length of time.

for now i only use linux server-side, but i'm thinking of maybe swiching from osx to linux for my next laptop. i played a little with both mint and ubuntu in vmware, but i don't think i can make a fair assessment. personally, i don't care for customization at all, so i was wondering if there were other issues besides that.

You should probably also try KDE. I've personally had bad experiences with Kubuntu, but the Fedora KDE spin and OpenSUSE have been very nice.

Re: Linux Mint 12 “Lisa” released

#48

This may be the first time I'd want to try a non-KDE desktop. Excellent job Mint team!

OT: Didn't he KDE4 release make you want to try something else?

Made me try a switch to Gnome, wasn't good for me though.

KDE4 now is great IMO, still a few things I don't like but really good, but then ... sheesh!

Re: Linux Mint 12 “Lisa” released

#49
post #42
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people get used to a workflow. They have an environment set up just how they like. All of a sudden Gnome release Gnome 3 - which breaks a lot of that workflow, and also means that people wanting to stay at Gnome 2.x are going to drift slowly into dependancy hell. And Shuttleworth plays his benign dictator card, saying he doesn't care what the community thinks, they're wrong, and Unity is the way forward. Unity a…

XFCE is great. I switched to xubuntu and loving it. It might be lacking. but I find it far more enjoyable to use than Unity or gnome3. I tried to use both gnome3 and unity. and both had me very frustrated.

Sure - re-reading my comment I see I was perhaps a bit dismissive but that wasn't my intention.

Re: Linux Mint 12 “Lisa” released

#50
post #26

I run Ubuntu 10.10 as my main OS and it screams. I Installed Mint 12 on a test partition and it is a significant slow down, particularly regarding all things UI. Ubuntu puts out a pretty steady 50fps with translucent desktop cube in 1920x1200, Mint 12 can barley transition between workspaces without a choppy slow down. 5-10 second lock up whenever I use ctr+alt+T. Window color inversion (and apparently most of compiz…

You're comparing apples to oranges, kind of. What you're saying isn't necessarily reflective of Mint 12; it could just as well be Ubuntu 11.10.

I should have mentioned that I've tried Ubuntu 11.10 on the same machine and noticed similar UI performance problems compared to Ubuntu 10.10 (as well as a broken compiz).

Yes, some of this could be attributed to Ubuntu 11.10, but the comparison is still valid since both are competing for me as a user. If the Mint team finds it necessarily to subsume Ubuntu then they must be prepared to accept the problems that are inherited as a result.

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