<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><div><span>Linux Mint comes in a KDE flavor (currently KDE 4.9 on Linux Mint 14 "Nadia".)</span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><br><span></span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span><br></span></div><div><br></div> <div style="font-family: times new roman, new york, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <div style="font-family: times new roman, new york, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <div dir="ltr"> <font face="Arial" size="2"> <hr size="1"> <b><span style="font-weight:bold;">From:</span></b> Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com><br> <b><span style="font-weight:
bold;">To:</span></b> conspire@linuxmafia.com <br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Thursday, December 6, 2012 2:13 PM<br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> [conspire] Future of GNOME<br> </font> </div> <br>
I wrote: (reply to Jeff Hodges):<br><br>> By the way, you might be happier with Linux Mint with the 'Cinnamon'<br>> UI, which emulates the GNOME2 desktop metaphor that was based on<br>> now-unmaintained GNOME Shell. 'Cinnamon' uses a fork of the window<br>> manager on which GNOME Shell was based, one called Mutter, and provides<br>> a GNOME2-style desktop metaphor within a GNOME3 software framework <br>> (that includes the leading-edge gtk+3 graphics toolkit)<br><br>As I said in one of my fair-disclosure bits, I've just never been much<br>of a GNOME fan. _However_, I'm a long-time observer, and have noticed <br>that the long-term development path of GNOME and related projects has <br>within the last couple of years created major controversy among GNOME's<br>existing users.<br><br>It's not just been Canonical's Unity (a plug-in for the Compiz<br>compositing 3D window manager), though Unity's gotten the worst of the<br>bad
press and most of the hating. It's also GNOME3 generally.<br><br>And what's wrong with GNOME3? Maybe nothing. It depends on your point<br>of view. It all comes down to whether you are fine with the<br>GNOME/Freedesktop.org guys deciding (I generalise, here) to throw out<br>everything and start over on a frequent basis -- and not give a damn<br>about what their existing users like. <br><br>At the November SVLUG meeting, speaker Dan Mashal made some remark about<br>systemd (another fabulous Freedesktop.org thing), leading me to deadpan<br>from the audience something about Freedesktop.org having a policy that<br>all their subsystems will be EOLed and rewritten from scratch at no<br>later than three-month intervals. And Dan _believed_ me. I had to say, <br>'No, I was just kidding.' The point is, it was close enough to the<br>truth.<br><br>Anyway, since very early days, the GNOME developers have had
a<br>consistent attitude: If you express dissatisfaction with choices they<br>make, that proves you were not part of the 'target audience'. If you<br>don't, you might be -- and they know what's good for you without<br>consulting you. Fair enough; nobody is forced to run what they write.<br>Just be aware that you get what's written on the tin, which is whatever<br>trendy objective the latest from-scratch rewrite aims at. (This month,<br>it's pretending that all desktops need to have smartphone/tablet user<br>interfaces.)<br><br><br>_______________________________________________<br>conspire mailing list<br><a ymailto="mailto:conspire@linuxmafia.com" href="mailto:conspire@linuxmafia.com">conspire@linuxmafia.com</a><br>http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/conspire<br><br><br> </div> </div> </div></body></html>