GTK2 GNOME in Trisquel6

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zumza
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Joined: 08/13/2012

Hey guys, I've switched to Xfce, but being built on GTK2 it relies on a lot of components that the GNOME 3 team has screwed with to oblivion. Many apps still need GTK2 theme support and it appears this is gone as well. Either way, plain old Xfce is at least useful, more than I can say for GNOME 3 or Unity.

If the packaging team is so quick to put new stuff in Trisquel to screw over everyone's desktop, why haven't they put MATE in yet? Gnome 2 was very smoth and functional so I see no reason to remove old Gnome 2 from Trisquel repository.

I'm sorry, but the GNOME 3 team changed too many things and screwed up all the paradigms of traditional desktop computing. I want to be able to see what I have open without doing extra work. I want to customize everything. I pretty much need icons on my desktop. I also see no reason to obliterate the whole screen just to display a programs menu which could easily fit in a much smaller space while providing the exact same functionality. I like running the same desktop environment on old machines and new machines, including ones without 3D accelerated GPU's necessary to run GNOME3. I use multiple monitors, which work well with many windows open, and need a way to manage those open windows efficiently. I play games, which sometimes requires that GPU resources be used for the game itself, not the window manager surrounding the game window. I do a bunch of other stuff too, and none of it fits well with the changes that the GNOME team has made, and I think it was quite irresponsible of them to pull such a drastic change under the same name without forking the old project.

If anyone has experience installing MATE on Trisquel 5.5, I would love to know.

Are there any plans to include Mate in Trisquel 6?

Magic Banana

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Joined: 07/24/2010

Trisquel reuses the packaging work from Debian and Ubuntu. If none of those projects wishes to maintain a package for MATE, this desktop environment will not be easily available for Trisquel. It may happen though.

Notice that:

  • your tastes on GNOME 3 are not universal: some people, including myself, like GNOME 3;
  • Trisquel's configuration of the GNOME Shell (GNOME 3's interface) enables icons on the desktop;
  • the Fedora project has worked on software rendering for GNOME Shell (no need of 3D acceleration) and it will hopefully end up in Ubuntu and then Trisquel;
  • navigating between workspaces and windows can be pretty efficient if you know the shortcuts;
  • GNOME Shell is fairly configurable through extensions that are a bliss to install and uninstall

That said, if you want to install MATE, the process is indicated here (Trisquel 5.5 Brigantia being based on Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot).

obibon
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Joined: 04/12/2012

I installed MATE as soon as I upgraded to 5.5 and haven't had any problems with it. I did it the way is explained in their wiki, in the link Magic Banana is providing.

As for the question of it is going to be in the official releases, well I would really like to see that (because I'm one of the Gnome3 hard haters), but if it doesn't happen, it'll be OK as long as development on MATE and interest on their side goes on.

I mean, there's no official MATE for 5.5, but I still run on it...

t3g
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Joined: 05/15/2011

Gnome 3 sucks and even Debian 7 will use XFCE by default when it hits stable: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTE1NTk

As for MATE, you can nab it at http://mate-desktop.org/install/#ubuntu (11.10 for Brigitania) and use older trisquel-gtk-theme and trisquel-icon-theme packages from Dagda to get the look.

Magic Banana

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Debian switched to Xfce because they want a full desktop to fit on a CD. It has nothing to do with "GNOME 3 sucking". You perfectly know since it is explained in length in the page your first link points to.

t3g
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Joined: 05/15/2011

The problem with Gnome 3 is that the Gnome developers are very stubborn and refuse to accept any feedback from the community with no real clear vision for the future besides wanting to do their own OS. Nautilus in 3.6 is thought of to be a mess and that is why Linux Mint is forking Nautilus 3.4 under the name Nemo and Ubuntu is considering using Nautilus 3.4 for Ubuntu 12.10 or replacing it entirely.

Gnome Shell is less intuitive than Unity and classical desktop users either go to XFCE or MATE. Linus hates Gnome 3 and the BSD crowd doesn't want to touch it.

andrew
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Joined: 04/19/2012

"Gnome Shell is less intuitive than Unity"
[citation needed]

"Linus hates Gnome 3"
So?

"BSD crowd doesn't want to touch it."
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-ports&m=131585247418198&w=2

kokomo_joe

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Joined: 07/16/2011

I have a question:

I know Trisquel uses the "fallback mode" due to 3D driver issues. It looks and mostly acts like Gnome2 as far as I can tell with the limited time I've played with it.

I've heard that with the many extensions around, that you can make full-3D-Gnome-Shell look and act like Gnome2. Is that true?

If so, then why MATE? Why don't people just configure Gnome-Shell (If they have free 3D) and move on? Mate is Gnome2/GTK2, right?

(Please forgive if this question seems obvious or insulting. I don't spend a lot of time in Gnome/KDE, etc. I have used Fluxbox for years and recently Openbox due to it's copyleft goodness.)

I must say, I do find it a bit funny that there are so many flame wars over desktop environments/window managers.

"Install them all. Try them all. Pick the one you like." -Dave Yates

Magic Banana

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As I wrote earlier in this thread:
the Fedora project has worked on software rendering for GNOME Shell (no need of 3D acceleration) and it will hopefully end up in Ubuntu and then Trisquel.

Follow the link for the details. Basically, GNOME 3 is left untouched (featurewise) but the CPU, and not the video card, renders it (current CPU are more than enough for this task).

Cyberhawk

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Joined: 07/27/2010

Afaik there are compatibility issues between Gnome 2 and Gnome 3 fallback mode. You can't do all you used to be able to do. I think a lot of plugins for the panel will be missing, etc.

If you were on Fluxbox, that's nice for you. Changes within Gnome will not affect you that much. But if you were on Gnome 2 all the time and suddenly it's Gnome 3, you are facing the neccessity of quickly adapting to a new environment, so you can go on with what you have been doing before. Be it because you want to switch from Gnome or because you want to stay.

I don't like the Gnome 3 environment and switched to KDE. After a long time I still can't do all the things I've used to be able to do, just because KDE is different and I have to "learn it's ways".

obibon
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Joined: 04/12/2012

"KDE is different and you have to learn its ways", but isn't also Gnome3 different and you just have to learn its ways?

For me the problem is that I don't like either Gnome3's nor KDE's ways (in fact I think I hate more KDE than I do Gnome3). I like Gnome2's.

MATE is a fork of Gnome2 yes, but they plan on porting it to Gtk3.

Cyberhawk

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Joined: 07/27/2010

Exactly, this is what I mean. Since Gnome 3 came out, I have to switch. Be it to Gnome 3, or to something else. Maybe I should have stuck with XFCE, will try it out sometime soon.

And I don't like the absence of a traditional desktop.

Dave_Hunt

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Joined: 09/19/2011

Just run GNOME 3 in fallback.

On 08/15/2012 02:37 AM, name at domain wrote:
>

aloniv

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Joined: 01/11/2011

Since the shift to Gnome 3 I have tested Xfce, LXDE and E17. I like E17 best despite it being a bit less stable.

andrew
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Joined: 04/19/2012

Wow, a lot of GNOME 3 bashing...

You might want to try using the Clearwaita (Clearlooks) theme which has GTK+v2 and GTK+v3.

I'm using Trisquel 5.5 (and I have Xfce installed) and it works fine.

Clearlooks:
http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Clearlooks-Phenix?action=content&content=145210

Chris

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Joined: 04/23/2011

There is a fork of GNOME Shell you might want to look at called Cinnamon. I'm not terribly familiar with it although I know one of the projects we are sponsoring has a heavy hand in its development. Unlike Mate it is based on GNOME 3 components. That might be a more sound direction to go in due to the financial and development resources being poured into it. Unlike MATE I don't think GNOME 3 is quite dead yet. For one not everybody hates it and two it has Red Hat behind it. Of course that is apparently part of the problem. Apparently Red Hat's involvement has/is heavily influencing the direction of the GNOME desktop environment.

I'll back up a minute too. I'm not saying MATE is dead. I'm just not sure if there is the developer base to maintain or improve it. Red Hat and Canonical though have a huge pool of money to fund the development of GNOME 3/Unity and comparison wise I'd be doubtful that MATE or Cinnamon can survive without piggybacking off a larger project.

XFCE and some others do exist as people have mentioned. As far as I know these other desktop environments don't have anywhere near the resources so it might be short sighted to say any of them will be dead tomorrow so long as there are a few dedicated individuals.

It seems to me the projects going places are the more community oriented ones with less corporate direction. Unity is Canonical, whereas GNOME is Red Hat. There may be a difference between GNOME 3 and Unity development wise although I think the money/development behind each says a lot.

Cinnamon and MATE are more community oriented.

:) If I got anything wrong here please feel free to correct.

Darksoul71
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Joined: 01/04/2012

For me Desktop environments are overrated. I like Trisquel 5.5 Gnome as much or as less as I like my XFCE desktop over at my Xubuntu Box.

All I need from a DE is:
- "Taskbar" which I can move either at the top or bottom of my screen
- Startmenu which integrates to the taskbar and all applications installed via package manager automagically appear in the startmenu
- Option to drop links for quickstart to the taskbar.
- Configurable symbols for stuff like mixer, network connection and such.

In my scenario LXDE, MATE, Gnome3 Fallback or XFCE will all do their job (more or less).

Much more important for me are features like a powerful terminal program and a good filemanager (multi-tabbed, menu for user-defined scripts / commands). With some cool icon sets, wallpapers and theme pretty much any WM / DE out there can be made looking cool.

For me Gnome 2 was nice and I got used to it but it is not mandatory.
Only those DE following a new UI paradigma (Unity, Gnome3 Shell) simply suck a big time.

Just my two cents,
Holger

Darksoul71
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Joined: 01/04/2012

Sorry, I forgot to mention a few things in my last post:

I think Trisquel 5.5 shows how nice Gnome 3.0 can look like although I rarely can see a benefit by using Gnome over another DE. With main focus on a fast, slim and reliable system I would rather choose something like XFCE or LXDE for Trisquel 6.X.

Speaking for the file manager I just wanted to highlight how much you can enhance your productivity once you got used to writing all those small helper scripts yourself and integrate them into a filemanager which supports custom user actions (e.g. SpacemanFMMod, SpaceFM, Nautilus or Thunar). I think it is pretty important that Trisquel 6.X provides an alternative filemanager for "Power Users". At least more important than considering switching to MATE :-)

zumza
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Joined: 08/13/2012

duplicate ;)
Smiley face

zumza
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Joined: 08/13/2012

@obibon it would be nice if you would write a small tutorial how to install MATE under trisquel 5.5/6.0 it might be very helpful for some users here in forum ;)
@kokomo_joe in my opinion there are worlds between gnome3 and gnome2/mate/xfce