Hi Morgan,We'll all agree that Google.com provides better results and more features than Google CSE, and the reason for this has to do with money. Google isn't helping and isn't communicating on the matter. Now, why do we, at Linux Mint, use Google CSE rather than Google.com? Well it's all about money as well. I personally work on Linux Mint full time. I managed to leave my previous job and live from my activity on Linux Mint. We're getting close to being able to pay for additional staff and when it comes to throwing money at certain things (artwork contests, hosting, equipment) we have a budget there in place for us to do our job comfortably. The income generated by the distribution means we're able to tackle bigger projects and I'm able to be behind the screen, not just one or two hours a day, but all the time.
We're doing our best, using scripts, to improve the CSE results, but we're limited in what we do by Google Inc. We'd love for them to give people the same level of functionality as Google.com, but it's not in our hands. Our ambition is to rival the big OSes out there and not just to develop Mint as a hobby at the week-end. It hurts the usability of the desktop, that's true, but it's also our main source of income and it has a huge impact on the project as a whole. People can change it, we don't encourage them to, or discourage them either, I think people who are really annoyed with it will go ahead and change it, and others will leave it in place and continue, by their activity on the Web, to indirectly finance our work on Linux Mint.
Regards, Clement Lefebvre Linux Mint On 15/09/10 18:06, Morgan Gangwere wrote:
On 9/14/2010 4:41 AM, Clement Lefebvre wrote:Hi everyone, Before we talk about anything else, I would like to thank you and the Debian project for providing such a wonderful base. It's been the case since 2006, when we started using Debian via Ubuntu, and it's now clearer than ever with our newly released LMDE based directly on Debian Testing.You're not the only ones jumping ship! CrunchBang has been moving to Squeeze sources instead of grinding its teeth against Ubuntu for its 10 release.I'm really excited about this and I look forward to a close cooperation between our two projects.Isn't that what open source is all about? ;)My name is Clement Lefebvre, I'm the leader and founder of Linux Mint. I'll answer any question you may have and I'll act as the main contact.<rant> Why the CSE? Why? I /left/ mint over that.</rant>I might also ask Ikey Doherty, one of our developers, who coded big parts of the live-installer and identified the steps involved in transforming Debian Testing into a live media, to join in and to be present on this ML.CrunchBang has been doing live installs under Debian in their 10 alphas; I've never used it but talk to them!Don't hesitate to ask questions, make remarks or send us feedback. We'll do the same here to send things your way. I hope we'll be able to work together in an easy and constructive way. There's quite a few things we'd be interested to see adopted upstream, so we'll see about this.