MATE Desktop 1.4 Offers GNOME2 Improvements

[9a3eedi]

Yeah, the problem is that MATE is doing it in completely the wrong way. They've got the classic UI, but the crap code - whereas Gnome 3 has the much improved code that they're not using. They started by trying to continue the old Gnome 2 code, instead of immediately porting the small number of Gnome2-only modules (the panel, the old control panel) to 3. By doing the latter, they'd be in the position of sharing most of their code with upstream Gnome, maintaining only their own small set of packages. As-is, they've inherited *everything* that was in Gnome 2, even the stuff that still exists in 3.

Isn't what you're suggesting basically what the Cinnamon project is doing?

http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/

I don't see the problem with forking gnome 2 though. That's one of the nice things about Open source, being able to fork whatever you want.. Cinnamon is nice, but it's not exactly gnome 2, and many people simply want to stick to what they're used to.

The MATE developers already realize that a lot of the code is going to get old soon and so they're planning to move it to GTK3, which shouldn't impact the whole functionality of the desktop, because it's just a different API that does essentially the same thing (but with different non-backwards-compatible syntax), right?