MATE (GNOME 2 Fork) For The Fedora Desktop?

[elsie]

Being avaible doesn't mean it's included (as in default repository or offically maintained). It's avaible for Arch Linux as unoffical repository maintained by some community member and same for Ubuntu and Fedora.

It's possible that I have misunderstood what you have meant but forking project like Gnome means that you are responssible for all future developement. Mate is project that has no future as anything else except frozen Gnome 2.32. It should be obvious that Ubuntu doesn't want that as it's essential for Ubuntu to move foward. Not to mention that Ubuntu seemingly doesn't have any intrest to maintain classical Gnome environment regardless of what "Gnome" does. If they wanted to provide classical Gnome user exprerience they could/would simply base it on Gnome 3 not fork the deprecated Gnome 2.32.

I get what you're saying. I think initially the idea was to port Mate to GTK3.

I think I might be coming across as a gnome2 fanboy or something....ugh...

[bwat47]

I can't think of a bigger nightmare than maintaining gnome 2 by myself lol. Wanting to provide a gnome 2 experience is admirable, but I think mate is the wrong way to go about it. XFCE is already pretty close, it just needs more polish.

[Teho]

I think initially the idea was to port Mate to GTK3.

Yes that have been said but it makes no sence. Most of the Gnome 3 apps are simply gtk3 ports of old Gnome applications that have been stripped from unmaintained and deprecated technologies. Why would anyone want to replicated the work rather than simply adding the lost features back to the already done ports? If the ideas conflict with the Gnome developers it would still make more sence to fork the selected Gnome 3 applications. I however highly doubt that anything of that sort is going to happen. There simply isn't engouh intrest. We already have a lot of alternatvie Gnome/gtk applications to replace the ones that we don't like.

[drag]

Why would anyone want to replicated the work rather than simply adding the lost features back to the already done ports?

Because GTK3 is substantially better then GTK2.

Also this reduces the amount of work MATE has to do because they can let the Gnome 3 folks maintain the toolkit instead of having to maintain a fork themselves.

In the long run, however MATE doesn't have much of a chance. Every time Gnome project people decide to make a change people always flip out, act all dramatic and weepy. Mate is not the first fork of Gnome and it's not going to be the last.

Eventually people will forget why they hated Gnome's changes, start to use it like it's the standard thing, then start getting all bitchy and weepy that Gnome doesn't change things fast enough.

It's the curse that comes along with being a relatively successful open source project.

[Teho]

Because GTK3 is substantially better then GTK2. -- Also this reduces the amount of work MATE has to do because they can let the Gnome 3 folks maintain the toolkit instead of having to maintain a fork themselves.

That's exactly my point. Gnome already ported Nautilus and all the other core Gnome applications to GTK3 so why would Mate do that all again? Most of the differences between Gnome 3 and 2 come from removong deprecated technologies which I highly doubt anyone would like to maintain. So if someone wants to create GTK3 based Gnome 2 user experience he's better off either by improving the software upstream or forking the Gnome 3 equilevants and simply adding the lost features from transition to Gnome 3. Most of the critique is either towards Gnome Shell or the lazy fallback mode not the applications themselves. Improving gnome-panel and few other applications sounds much more reasonable than maintaining hundreds of deprecated pacakges.

[ssam]

In the long run, however MATE doesn't have much of a chance. Every time Gnome project people decide to make a change people always flip out, act all dramatic and weepy. Mate is not the first fork of Gnome and it's not going to be the last.
.

MATE may not have to last for ever. hopefully gnome3 will become faster and more stable over time. eventually all the old features may be ported to gnome3 through extensions. until then i'd like to run a modern kernel/xorg/firefox/etc with a stable and useful DE.

[Delgarde]

IMO forking gnome 2 is a colossal waste of time. First of all one of the reasons gnome 3 was a huge re-write was gnome 2 was becoming difficult to maintain.

Very much agreed, for that reason. People focus on the UI changes in Gnome 3, but it was also a cleanup of all of those pieces of Gnome 2 that had been judged undesirable, something they didn't want to use anymore, and that nobody was maintaining.

And so rather than simply reproducing the old UI in a Gnome 3 world, the MATE developers have effectively gone dumpster-diving for all the stuff that Gnome 3 threw away.

[squirrl]

Of all of you who here is a developer with experience in GTK?

Seriously, who here has developed an application in GTK?


My goodness, maintaining Gnome 2.0 isn't hard at all. The majority of the work is just getting GTK, ATK, Pango etc to compile on the latest set of GLibc, GCC, and XOrg. There must be some type of overlord-hive mind controlling all the Linux users. Thank God the influence hasn't made it to the developers yet.

Anybody that ran Slackware back in the late 90's version 3,4, and 9 knows how to compile GTK. Gnome isn't much harder. ie. ./configure --prefix=/usr && make && make install
pkgconfig use to not even be shipped.

Maybe Elton John was correct, the good life robs us of our intelligence so I'm going back to my plow. slack

[bwat47]

Seriously, who here has developed an application in GTK?


My goodness, maintaining Gnome 2.0 isn't hard at all. The majority of the work is just getting GTK, ATK, Pango etc to compile on the latest set of GLibc, GCC, and XOrg. There must be some type of overlord-hive mind controlling all the Linux users. Thank God the influence hasn't made it to the developers yet.

Anybody that ran Slackware back in the late 90's version 3,4, and 9 knows how to compile GTK. Gnome isn't much harder. ie. ./configure --prefix=/usr && make && make install
pkgconfig use to not even be shipped.

Maybe Elton John was correct, the good life robs us of our intelligence so I'm going back to my plow. slack

You are really oversimplyifiyng things and ignoring the fact that gnome 2 is deprecated software that still has bugs. Maintaining it is a waste of time when you can accomplish the same thing working with newer tech. Just compoling gnome 2 forever and never improving anything is stupid.

[squirrl]

You are really oversimplyifiyng things and ignoring the fact that gnome 2 is deprecated software that still has bugs. Maintaining it is a waste of time when you can accomplish the same thing working with newer tech. Just compoling gnome 2 forever and never improving anything is stupid.

WindowMaker is still shipped with Slackware and still in the respositories for Debian and Ubuntu.
Most would consider it Feature Completed. But to say software is deprecated is way too harsh.

RedHat still makes a fortune off companies providing them with Gnome 2.x.

But it's sad that distributions make the lame decisions they do.

At some point everyone is going to have to use the drill. But if the drill no longer functions as it did 6 months ago then the hole, the drill will provide, not.