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RE: Installing Cinnamon 2.0





Le 12.10.2013 15:42, Mark Allums a écrit :
I might could change the typos in docs to become different typos in
different places. I can't develop for MATE, it's not part of my skill
set. I will encourage other people to get involved, that much, I can
do.

Package maintenance is not really a programming task AFAIK. It, of course, need you to be able to compile stuff, but not to write source code :)

> People are abandoning Gnome 3 in droves. Most are turning to XFCE, I
> think largely because it is already in Debian.  If MATE were in
> Debian, a large contingent of those people would use MATE if it were > available, I think, because most of them were using GNOME 2 before.

And what about those people being ancient gnome users because gnome is the default, and not because gnome is better (1) ? Maybe the problems they had with gnome encouraged them to try other DEs, like KDE, XFCE and LXDE present in Debian, and from that base, choosing the one which fit
best their needs.
Perhaps they would not return to gnome2 know, because they finally

That's possible. The point is:

1. Gnome 3 isn't desirable to many,

Yes, someone involved in computer news can not ignore that, even if he does not use a DE, same for windows 8 :) In fact, I like this, because it always make me laugh. By trying to run on the last fashion (not sure about the wording) things are just collapsing. I am really happy to have had the curiosity to search alternatives, instead of having to be stuck with disgusting stuff.

2. Many have stated a preference for Gnome 2, and all aren't
completely satisfied with the alternatives offered.  XFCE is regarded
by many as the best of a bad lot. This wasn't stated implicitly; I
assumed it was implied by context, but that was a mistake.

But MATE is a part of that bad lot, is not it?

And honestly, of course you will never find gnome in XFCE. It's why XFCE is XFCE, not a 3rd clone of gnome. (or a 1st considering it's age) Goals are not the same, they are to keep something as lightweight as possible, but deeply integrated with other features of the desktop, unlike LXDE which wants to have only independent softwares, which can interact easily between them, but does not have a dependency. Different philosophy, where the gnome one seems to be to always provide everything possible, but only if it follows dev's opinion of what is nice. But my point was, that maybe so many of those people would have be happy with XFCE's philosophy at start? People on windows stayed with XP for a long time after all, with it's "poor" but "efficient" GUI. And they now refuse to move to w8. (I know, it's not windows the subject here, but the analogy is not unrelated I think)

And those dev, I can not blame them. It's an open source software, where people makes stuff for themselves (not paid, AFAIK), which can possibly be useful for other people. That's the danger of things built by volunteers, and that's why it's so sad that so many people forgot the UNIX philosophy. Ancient gnome's users now have to maintain multiple forks for all the software suite.

That's possible.  I never said all XFCE users wanted MATE.

Good to read it explicitly.


My main goal is to get the point across that, like others have said,
the prejudice against MATE is strong.  I believe it's mainly
religious, and that the practical reasons against it are all solvable.

I do not feel as if I were religious. If DEs were a religion, then I would be an apostate. (heh... sounds like a nice DE's name if someday I wanted to start my own) My interventions are more to say that, in short, I do not think that people should advertise that much about Mate on debian's user-list while those issues are not fixed: _ absent from official repos (with all the problems it *might* provide, considering installations which *could* be more complex than it seems) _ OP did not asked about which DE to use (people which want to use cinnamon often comes from gnome, and so must know about mate)

I hope I made my point more clear.

It's too big,
and it's just not something that appeals to me.

Agree. I think the same about mainstream DEs, in general. And I do not consider XFCE as a mainstream DE, even if it seem it could become thanks to gnome3. If a different paradigm were able to enter the mainstream DEs, it would really be a nice thing for DE users.


"berenger.morel@neutralite.org, debian-user@lists.debian.org"

You should really fix your mail configuration :) (I do not really mind, but that could annoy other people)


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