Mint 12 is out. Is this how future Trisquel releases will look like?
http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1889
Linux Mint 12 just came out in both DVD and CD versions with Gnome 3's Gnome Shell being picked over Unity and comes in various flavors. There is the custom "MGSE" with a heavily customized Gnome Shell to have it look and act like classic Linux Mint, the option to run pure Gnome Shell, and the Gnome 2 fork called MATE.
Seeing that Trisquel 5.5 and above will have to use Gnome Shell, Unity, or MATE in some way, will future releases look and act like Linux Mint 12? If the Trisquel team is unsure about the handling of Gnome Shell, will they adopt MATE as the primary desktop? The nice thing about Linux Mint is that the Trisquel team can use their MATE code and adapt it for their own use.
Since there has been no updates on the home page about the progress of a new version, there questions about the future of this OS. I'm currently running the LTS version (4.1) and having the option for MATE in addition to Gnome Shell/Unity would benefit many of us.
I am a member!
I believe the plan was to use Gnome 3 as the default desktop. As someone who prefers Gnome 2 over Gnome 3 and finds Gnome 3 fallback a little disappointing I'm interested in MATE, but as they admit it's not stable yet, so I don't see it becoming the desktop for the next release. The Mint Gnome 3 extensions look pretty cool, though, and though it's unlikely Trisquel would pick them up by default, it should be possible to use them in Trisquel anyway.
I noticed they started using DuckDuckGo as the search engine, like Trisquel has (http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1884). Apparently they have some sort of revenue sharing agreement. It might be possible for Trisquel to make a similar partnership with them, if it hasn't happened already.
I fooled around a little bit with Mint 12 in Virtualbox and tried removing Gnome Shell and Gnome fallback and going for a pure MATE environment. There are some small bugs here and there, but functioned very closely to the Gnome 2 environment in previous versions. The Trisquel team should try to throw MATE in their repositories for people to test even if it will not be installed by default.
In regards to the DuckDuckGo revenue partnership, I think that would be an excellent way for Trisquel to make money and bring broader visibility to the DDG search engine. The nice thing about their partnership with Linux Mint is that it is the standard DDG search string but with a t=lm in the URL. Maybe Trisquel's can be t=tri or something similar.
I did some research and they currently say they are getting a lot of requests for partnerships, but since Trisquel is one of a kind and sanctioned by the FSF, it may give you guys some pull.
Oh and here's the GitHub if curious: https://github.com/mate-desktop
"but since Trisquel is one of a kind and sanctioned by the FSF..."
What do you mean "Sanctionned by the FSF" ?
I believe he is referring to the list of Free GNU/Linux distros. They are a set of currently 9 distros that contain only free software (or if any is accidentally found remove it) and do not recommend non-free programs and have a commitment to do so.
My hardware isn't advanced enough to run Gnome 3, but I prefer LXDE anyway. As long as Trisquel mini is available, I'm happy!