Bug#658783: ITP: mate-common -- common scripts and macros to develop with MATE
Hello everybody!
Just an opinion from a simple user w/o big programming/configuration skills to the desktop discussion: I like the design of Gnome 2 very much and am grateful, that the MATE developers took the work to continue it.
I absolutely do not want to devalue the also noteworthy work from the developers of Gnome 3, Unity, KDE, XFCE, LXDE ..., but my personal DE is a question of taste, familiarisation and comfort.
Until now I tried Gnome 2 on Ubuntu 6.06 and Debian 6, XFCE and Unity on Ubuntu 12.04, and LXDE on Wheezy and Knoppix.
You guess it: I prefer Gnome2/MATE (followed by XFCE and LXDE), but that is just my non-representative personal opinion.
Because I will keep using oldfashioned desk- & laptops as workstation and no stylish mobile devices, I need a modern OS like Debian/Linux and a "conservative" DE with a main menue and panels to put my starters on.
I checked out MATE 1.6 with Debian 7 (testing CD from 2013-04-08, LXDE edition) on an amd64 desktop:
- I followed the instructions from http://wiki.mate-desktop.org/download#debian, where I was also pointed to this discussion.
- The installation worked and I got back my habitual DE with all necessary options
- Actually MATE includes misconfigurations/errors: After every login I get the message
"GDBus.Error: org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1.Error.failed: An authentication agent already exists for the given subject"
I guess this is something what the Debian custodians critizised before.
My laptop is an old HP compaq nx8220 from around 2005, upgraded to Pentium M 770 2.1 GHz, 2 GB RAM and 30 GB SSD. Because the actual Ubuntu can't be installed (the PAE thing), I came back to the roots: Debian 6 operates very well with Gnome 2. In addition Windows 7 works fine, what I need sometimes for the job. The graphics controller is 'ATI Mobility Radeon X600' (3D capable), and at home I put the oldie on a docking station HP PA287A, series HSTNN-IX02.
To know what I am talking about, I got Fedora 18 with Gnome 3.6 (yeah, only 5 h download at 50 kB/s overnight!) and bootet it from an USB stick. Here are the results:
# Laptop standalone: Fedora boots and Gnome 3.6 starts, everything works. My 1st opinion from 15 min playing with Gnome 3:
- Like: Modern look, good artwork, clarity. It really looks good, a great design job!
- Dislike: The "upper left corner move" to get the dash, missing of a real start menue, cannot drag&drop starters to panel or desktop, filemanager in full screen view w/o close button on the window frame, all the nice 3D effects eating the battery
--> I think, after some time I would get used to Gnome 3 and configure it my way, I also got used somehow to Unity. In direct comparison I prefer the menu structure of Gnome 3 .
# But there is a big "but": Laptop on docking station, for some reason the 3D acceleration does not work then: Fedora starts, I see the 1st info popup and then this error message:
"GNOME 3 Failed to load. Unfortunately GNOME 3 failed to start properly and started in the fallback mode. This most likely means your system (graphics hardware or driver) is not capable of delivering the full GNOME 3 experience."
Afterwards I see the nice blue desktop background w/o any dash or starter (no "upper left corner move" ...) and can't do anything with the mouse.
I guess, this is a problem of Gnome 3.6 and not of Fedora, because when automounting an USB stick, the filemanager opens automatically. If the successor of the "fallback mode", the "classic mode" of Gnome 3.8, would solve this problem, I do not know.
What does this mean to me:
- Hoping, that MATE reaches full Debian compatibility
- Installing the upcoming Debian 7 release w/o standard DE
- Afterwards manual installation of MATE 1.x
- Digging some evenings in the net to get this working ...
My proposal for full integration of MATE into Debian:
- Wait until full compatibility of MATE 1.x to Debian 7 is proven and its code basis is consistent with the standards
- Include MATE in the official Debian repositories
- Discussion of a MATE edition of Debian 7
I think, there are many potential fans of Debian 7 'MATE edition' out there who would choose this!
Best regards from Styria and: Stay developing!
Anton
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