MATE Desktop 1.4 Offers GNOME2 Improvements

[Redi44]

same way you like XFCE, some like LXDE, others like KDE, some others want Gnome 3 and a few other prefer MATE...
how can someone that likes a certain DE waste resorces?

Yes, but look at the screenshots. XFCE and MATE are virtually the same. And in my opinion more people develop for XFCE, so why should they split the resources?

oh that is easy... gnome 2 is gtk2, and a lot of people like it... take the name add MATE and you have the same thing that you had before.... why reinvent the wheel?

Upgrade is not "reinventing the wheel". There is nothing wrong with GTK3, it's just an improvement, so why should they stick with GTK2? Some apps are not even developed in GTK2 anymore!

[CTown]

According to this Wikipedia article, it seems that Nautilus has two modes (but the defualt mode switched at Gnome 2.30)! Couldn't they just include a patch to make Nautilus behave a tiny bit more Gnome 2 like (isn't that what Cinnamon does with Gnome Shell)? I thought the only point of Mate was that they hated Gnome Shell not all of Gnome 3.

Also, instead of maintaing Gnome Panel, why doesn't Mate just use Cinnamon? Doesn't Cinnamon already use GTK 3?

[solo2101]

Upgrade

isn't that what gnome 3 is?
i dint said that there was something wrong in gtk3... actually is one of MATE goals... some application are still using gtk2... for example firefox, libreoffice... and others...

[Redi44]

isn't that what gnome 3 is?
i dint said that there was something wrong in gtk3... actually is one of MATE goals... some application are still using gtk2... for example firefox, libreoffice... and others...

I understood it as Gnome2 = GTK2 > people want this.

BTW LO have GTK3 too...

[Kivada]

I understood it as Gnome2 = GTK2 > people want this.

BTW LO have GTK3 too...

Yeah, the goal is to cherry pick the few bits of GTK+3 that are actual improvements and add them to the Mate codebase.

[Delgarde]

oh that is easy... gnome 2 is gtk2, and a lot of people like it... take the name add MATE and you have the same thing that you had before.... why reinvent the wheel?

Don't confuse the Gnome 2 UI with the Gnome 2 code, nor the Gnome 3 UI (Shell) with the Gnome 3 code.

The Gnome 2 UI is the bit that people like - the code is the bit that the Gnome developers have been busy throwing away in recent years, desperately trying to reduce the burden of maintaining years of accumulated crap. And it's that old crap code that the MATE developers have adopted...

[solo2101]

Don't confuse the Gnome 2 UI with the Gnome 2 code, nor the Gnome 3 UI (Shell) with the Gnome 3 code.

sorry... I dont get what your saying...

[solo2101]

OK... now I got you... you are right... clean code is always good....

But I feel that MATE is doing what GNOME failed to do... lots of people wanted gnome "classic" (and I dont mean... fallback... mode) alive while ther where doing the transition... but that din't happened....

IMHO most of the fush that gnome 3 created was because that sense of “control” over your PC was taken away in the process of cleaning the code...

Please don't get me wrong... I like Gnome 3 DE and Ideas... I also like MATE Desktop... the same way I like KDE...

[finalzone]

OK... now I got you... you are right... clean code is always good....

But I feel that MATE is doing what GNOME failed to do... lots of people wanted gnome "classic" (and I dont mean... fallback... mode) alive while ther where doing the transition... but that din't happened....

Who are those "lot of people"? Without a proper methodology, it does not mean anything. The transition happened during the development of Gnome Shell since 2008 and was already released as a preview completed with case study publicly available on Gnome mail list. Where are those "lot of people" during that stage?

IMHO most of the fush that gnome 3 created was because that sense of ?control? over your PC was taken away in the process of cleaning the code...

No control means no ability to extend the functionality of Gnome shell nor the existence of extensions.gnome.org where some of them can be picked up by Gnome developers to further refine then.

[Delgarde]

OK... now I got you... you are right... clean code is always good....

But I feel that MATE is doing what GNOME failed to do... lots of people wanted gnome "classic" (and I dont mean... fallback... mode) alive while ther where doing the transition... but that din't happened....

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.