The Future of Linux Mint

2:50 am news

Ryan pointed me in the direction of the latest post on the Linux Mint blog. It’s an interesting and thoughtful description of what’s in the works for Linux Mint 12. As Clem puts it, “the future of Linux Mint is Gnome 3”. It’s definitely worth reading in full, and I look forward to seeing where Linux Mint “Lisa” goes!

11 Responses

  1. Martin Says:

    Thank you for this post! “MGSE” (Mint Gnome Shell Extensions) looks like a great way to handle a real demand for a conservative desktop.

    It’s much closer to the default Gnome3 than most other alternatives. Unity might become a maintenance challenge. “MGSE” looks less likely to become a maintenance challenge.

    “MGSE” should maybe be the future for the current “Gnome 3 Fallback mode”. Change that into “traditional mode”, “conservative mode”, “stone age desktop”, or what ever name people like.

    It was the same amount of outcry when X11 took more and more attention from the Linux console. Few of the people who was laughing of the GUI users are still pure console users. Many of them are using closed source and GUI. Something they would swear that they would never do. Gnome should try to keep the users with a traditional view. But it all up to the developers and their sponsors.

  2. arif Says:

    how about the problem with ATI resolution?

  3. Andreas Nilsson Says:

    Do you have the bug url handy?

  4. Zizzle Says:

    I hope the GNOME team gets the hint from this. As it stands GNOME 3 just isn’t usable for a large proportion of users.

    Mint will probably become the most popular distro since it actually listens to it’s users instead of forcing the output “usability experts” down everyones throat.

    I survived the GNOME 1.0 -> 2.0 transition. Sure a heap of configurability was lost, but the basic workflow remained, and a bunch of things got better. No so with 3. No taskbar. No applets. Can’t even set the font size. Can’t move the panel. Can’t have a one click application launch. Most of the panel is wasted space. The battery icon is tiny and useless. I can’t see anything that actually got better.

    I figured I would end up a GNOME refugee on XFCE.

    But Mint actually gives me hope that I will be able to use GNOME once again.

    [WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ‘0 which is not a hashcash value.

  5. nate-m Says:

    > Mint will probably become the most popular distro since it actually listens to it’s users instead of forcing the output “usability experts” down everyones throat.

    I know it feels great to feel like you have the right to insult people and feel self righteous about everything, but it’s worth pointing out that;

    A) Gnome developers are free software developers that work on the things that they want to work on and design the software how they would like to be. Other people are free to do the same. I don’t see how this could ever possibly equate to “”forcing the output “usability experts” down everyones throat.””

    I know that painting the Gnome developers in the light of some sort of gestapo that threatens the security of your desktop makes you feel good about yourself, but really you should try to think a about what you are actually saying before you actually say it.

    B) The extension framework that Mint is taking advantage of is something that was designed into Gnome for these sort of things. The Mint developers are taking what Gnome developers have provided and have customized it to suit their needs and the needs of their users.

    This may seem like some sort of “sticking it to the man”, but it’s just a example of open source software being, you know, open source.

    Oh and one other thing… This sort of transformation would not be nearly as easily done with Gnome 2 versus Gnome 3. In fact Gnome 3 is massively more configurable then Gnome 2 could of ever dreamed of being.

    > Can’t even set the font size.

    Try using Google. It’s not that difficult. If you are not afraid of the command line environment you can change it without even installing stuff. I prefer to use gnome-tweak-tool to do it though since fonts are a visual thing.

  6. lixoeletronico Says:

    > Gnome developers are free software developers that work on the things that they want to work on and design the software how they would like to be

    Yeah, thats pretty clear to me… gnome devs do what they want, not what users want…

  7. lixoeletronico Says:

    @Zizzle
    +1

  8. nate-m Says:

    Oh, and one thing. I hope that Gnome developers take the extension stuff seriously and treat it like they are willing to treat other APIs.

    It’s important.

  9. drago01 Says:

    There are no guarantees for stability in the extension API. Extensions can change pretty much everything by modify internals (monkey patching) hence there is no real “API” to keep stable.

  10. Juanjo Marin Says:

    Guadalinex v8 “gecos”, the distro by the regional government of Andalusia, has taken the same approach. They have developed several extensions to have a classic desktop environment.

    links:

    http://www.guadalinex.org/noticias/noticias/publicamos-la-prueba-de-concepto-de-guadalinex-v8/ (Spanish)

    http://forja.guadalinex.org/svn/gecos/pkgs/

    https://github.com/ahdiaz

    https://github.com/rcmorano/gnome-shell-gnome2-notifications

  11. Larry Cafiero Says:

    Kudos to Clement Lefevbre and the Linux Mint team. The Mint GNOME Shell Extension should be a welcome addition to the GNOME 3 desktop, and I sincerely hope GNOME seriously considers this in order to bring back those of us who are currently exiled to other desktop environments.

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