A Fork Of GNOME 2: The Mate Desktop

[elanthis]

I support a fork. I had my own one-night-long fork of GNOME "Fallback Mode" called EXDE before the gin worked its way out of my system and I remembered I like doing games, not desktop software. If only I were a multi-millionaire like Shuttleworth, then I could pay a bunch of people to make my pet OS too.

[[Knuckles]]

I don't think a full fork of everything is needed. After all, most changes were to nautilus, the desktop, and the control panel.

It would be nice if instead you could install half a dozen extra packages and continue to have the classic gnome desktop co-existing with gnome3 and unity.

[markg85]

interesting development but not so good.
Keeping old code (gtk2) alive when their is a way better gtk3 version is just being plain ignorant. They should fork the latest gnome version, drop the default gui and develop and upgrade the fallback mode. In the end that will also benefit Gnome. Note that this isn't the first time a "fork" is attempted. A couple years ago their where a bunch of patches that gnome wouldn't accept. Those where all put on a site and where kept up to date for some time. It never came to a full fork and it eventually died.

as for "dash" .. That's both smart and stupid of canonical. Smart, the use of QML since that way they both have software and hardware rendering depending on the used hardware. That's very smart! However, they are using a Gnome environment with Gnome apps but with this they add a huge Qt dependency.. That is not so smart. But hey, they can't rely on cairo for this stuff

Yeah, two interesting developments but both aren't that good in their current form.

[spidernik84]

I wonder: why so much hassle in forking Gnome2, when you have xfce that's also using gtk and it's quite lighter, still following the traditional desktop paradigm?

[drag]

I wonder: why so much hassle in forking Gnome2, when you have xfce that's also using gtk and it's quite lighter, still following the traditional desktop paradigm?

There is a loud and vocal minority of Linux users that piss and moan every time somebody decides to change something.

According to these people Gnome 1.x was crap because all we need Unix for is xterms.
Then Gnome 2.x was crap and Gnome 1.x was the bomb because Gnome 2.x got rid of Sawfish and removed a huge amount of script-ability and comparability to 'dumb it down'.
Then it Linux desktops developers were unreasonable because they started to try to take advantage of video acceleration and everybody knows that this is bad.

so on and so forth.

Gnome 3 kicks ass. That's all I have to say.

XFCE is just the same old BS. that has been around since Windows 98. I didn't like it much then and I don't like it much now. A UI should be used, not seen.

Anyways.... 'The Mate Desktop' will go on to be as popular GoneME and other failed forks. Most of these 'protests' get about as far as a website and mailing list before they evaporate into the ether.


People just can't get over the fact that the Gnome developers have the freedom to do what they please for the Gnome desktop for the sole reason that they are the ones that are willing to put in the time and work to get what they want done.

[madjr]

kde3 and gnome2 forks are just vaporware, no one uses them.

those that want a gnome2 like experience move to XFCE and help those devs out make it better.

at least kde3 has been seeing in movies like the social network, so keeping that around is nice for a while...

As for unity, the next release is shaping up really nice. Looking great.

[Licaon]

I keep retrying yet the site does not work

[Otus]

And the way it's successor dconf stores settings in standard properties files? You're right, that's a *lot* like the way Windows puts everything in a binary blob...

Is that supposed to be sarcastic?

From dconf design introduction:

Having all of the keys in a single compact binary format also avoids the intense fragmentation problems currently experienced by the tree-of-directories-of-xml-files approach.

(My bold.)

[liam]

That would be really Windows-like, sort of like having a registry with a bunch of hidden set... oh wait :\

You know, this really pisses me off.
For one, it's just wrong. g/d-conf store application setting while windows registry stores kernel/driver/hw settings as well.
Second, it's not really hidden. Using the absurdly easy to use editor anyone can either browse or search and make the documented* changes.

If you are KDE TOUGH(TM), altering such settings is a cakewalk.

*OK the documented part is a bit sketchy. Some settings are much better doc'd than others, and some have settings that are only documented in the code (if at all). So, that could be better.

[d2kx]

kde3 and gnome2 forks are just vaporware, no one uses them.

those that want a gnome2 like experience move to XFCE and help those devs out make it better.

at least kde3 has been seeing in movies like the social network, so keeping that around is nice for a while...

As for unity, the next release is shaping up really nice. Looking great.

This. (10 chars)