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Ubuntu Mate

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61–70 of 96 posts

Re: Ubuntu Mate

#61
post #32

I switched to Xubuntu and have grown to love XFCE more than I loved Gnome2. Best features: ability to script and directly hack configuration settings, basic features for window tiling. With scripts I can fully configure a dev box with a single command.

Interesting, I wondered if anyone else was playing with XFCE config this way. I have the important parts of my .config/xfce4 folder under git and replicated across 3 machines, which a branch for dual-screen tweaks on the desktop, etc. etc. I thought it was so cool that you can just figure this stuff out and get on with it!

My old setup had a mix of single-monitor and dual-monitor machines. Now I use single-monitor on all machines and found you can replicate the entire .config/xfce4 directory, even with different screen sizes. Everything syncs perfectly - Hotkeys, Menus, Panels etc. Works with git or rsync - so simple.

Re: Ubuntu Mate

#62
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be nice if people helped fix whatever they think is wrong with gnome 3 :( Wouldn't be possible if it involved fundamental design decisions.

that's what cinnamon was supposed to do.

Two different philosophies. MATE is GNOME 2 brought to the modern world, whereas Cinnamon comes from yearning for the new application base, but thinking that the new shell just won't cut it. It was purely a fork of GNOME Shell initially, the applications weren't ported until later. MATE was a full fork from the start.

Re: Ubuntu Mate

#64
post #32

I switched to Xubuntu and have grown to love XFCE more than I loved Gnome2. Best features: ability to script and directly hack configuration settings, basic features for window tiling. With scripts I can fully configure a dev box with a single command.

What kind of scripts do you use?

I use xfce but I only use xrandr (not depends on xfce) to switch between monitors and don't really know what other scripts are useful or good to have. (or what can I achieve with scripting)

Re: Ubuntu Mate

#65

Gotta love how people just won't let go and move on. Imagine if all the diehard mac users ported OS9 to OSX because "OSX was forced on them". It's called progress. Gnome2 was a dying project when Unity was announced. Gnome3 was "coming soon", but flailing around. Unity is different, sure, but so was OSX to a degree when it came out. People need to move on. Unity is the present and future of Ubuntu. We've been talking…

If you go back and read early Daring Fireball posts you will find him complaining loudly about various parts of OS X not being as good as OS 9, and it very much was forced on them.

This is the same writer that makes a point of mocking pundits who assail Apple with poor advice that would be catastrophic if followed.

Re: Ubuntu Mate

#66
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are certainly entitled to your opinion. At my company we use Mint Mate on all desktops. It's clean, simple, works great, and doesn't require training for employees who have never used Linux.

Why Mate instead of a modern, extendable DE such as GNOME 3?

Training cost. It is that simple. Same reason a lot (not all) companies are 'downgrading' PCs with Windows 8 back to Windows 7.

Have you ever pushed a major application re-design out to 'normal' users?

Disclaimer: personally, I quite like Gnome Shell running on top of the Gnome 3 libraries and gdm3.

Re: Ubuntu Mate

#67

Gotta love how people just won't let go and move on. Imagine if all the diehard mac users ported OS9 to OSX because "OSX was forced on them". It's called progress. Gnome2 was a dying project when Unity was announced. Gnome3 was "coming soon", but flailing around. Unity is different, sure, but so was OSX to a degree when it came out. People need to move on. Unity is the present and future of Ubuntu. We've been talking…

[deleted]

Re: Ubuntu Mate

#68

Gotta love how people just won't let go and move on. Imagine if all the diehard mac users ported OS9 to OSX because "OSX was forced on them". It's called progress. Gnome2 was a dying project when Unity was announced. Gnome3 was "coming soon", but flailing around. Unity is different, sure, but so was OSX to a degree when it came out. People need to move on. Unity is the present and future of Ubuntu. We've been talking…

People complain about Unity and Gnome3 because they don't offer workflows that work well for desktops. The Linux community is open to change and new ideas, but when the majority of users are unhappy with something for such a long time then something is clearly wrong.

Re: Ubuntu Mate

#69

Gotta love how people just won't let go and move on. Imagine if all the diehard mac users ported OS9 to OSX because "OSX was forced on them". It's called progress. Gnome2 was a dying project when Unity was announced. Gnome3 was "coming soon", but flailing around. Unity is different, sure, but so was OSX to a degree when it came out. People need to move on. Unity is the present and future of Ubuntu. We've been talking…

Progress, in general, implies some sort of improvement. Unity is not necessarily an improvement or regression from GNOME 2, it simply is. Also keep in mind that, architecturally, Unity is a replacement for the GNOME Shell, but is still heavily tied to the rest of the GNOME userland.

Actually, I rather like Unity. However in versions later than 12.04 it breaks LibreOffice mnemonics (Alt-F-A for Save File As... and Alt-I-O-F for Insert Formula) which happens to be 80% of my work-flow.

I gather it is something to do with the way the global menu software works.

Re: Ubuntu Mate

#70

Really exciting that people still yearn for classic GNOME2 desktop environments! I know quite a few people who jumped ship from Ubuntu when Unity starting being forced on everybody by default. Lubuntu (LXDE) has always been a bit buggy for me, but still makes for great systems (especially on older laptops). Though I for one think the "halcyon" days of Ubuntu didn't just include a snappy/stable user interface, it also…

Hell, I even switched to Windows 7 for a while, back when Fedora came only with Gnome3. It didn't help, that at the time the Linux kernel also had some general problems with power consumption. By now, Gnome 3 is actually quite good, but still uses more power than MATE. Cinnamon is slow and buggy as hell. Unity is just slow. XFCE has become quite good, but still can't handle docking (or un/plugging an external monitor…

For those that really prefer Gnome 2 there is always CentOS/Springdale Linux/Scientific Linux/Oracle Linux version 6.x. Most projects providing support until 2020.

Be prepared for the usual Enterprise Linux repository waggle dance (multiple repositories required for a reasonable range of software and media codecs). But it works rather well.

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