[LUAU] A reflection on the state of the Linux desktop

[Jeff Mings]

Looks very lean.  I had no idea this WM existed.

We're _REALLY_ going to wish we had this sort of choice with Windows, in 
several months, when our users complain about "the funny squares that 
ate the start menu" in Windows 8, and we can't simply switch in the 
desktop they'd rather have.

Vive La Différence!

-Jeff

On 08/31/2012 01:41 PM, Jason Axelson wrote:
> Hey Jeff,
>
> I've been using Ubuntu 12.04 for the last 6 months or something and I
> like it. Although I also don't run unity and instead run "Awesome
> Window Manager" which is a cool tiling window manager.
>
> Jason
>
> On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 1:17 PM, Jeff Mings <jeffm at lava.net> wrote:
>> A reflection on the state of the Linux desktop, written to hopefully spare
>> others a lot of wasted time:
>>
>>      It was time to upgrade my primary desktop.  I prefer Centos for servers
>> and Ubuntu for desktops, and Ubuntu 12.04.1 was just released, suggesting a
>> more refined bundle of Ubuntu.  I've already deployed 12.04 on a number of
>> other machines, but my main personal desktop was still using the last
>> Long-Term-Service release, 10.04, with the Gnome 2 desktop.
>>
>>      Many of you have seen the newer Unity desktop that is now the default
>> for Ubuntu.  It's very pretty and impressive as a potential interface for
>> unifying tablets, phones and PCs, but much of the desktop workflow just
>> isn't suited to getting things done quickly. You can fix Unity's biggest
>> issue, the baffling omission of a regular menu, by using the Gnome Classic
>> Menu Indicator.  However, there are a number of other issues with getting
>> work done quickly with Unity, so I decided to try Gnome 3 again.
>>
>>      Gnome 3 is remarkably beautiful, fluid and elegant.  After a bit of
>> tweaking and familiarization, I decided I could move to the newest version
>> of Gnome.  When I last tried it, several months ago on a different distro,
>> it didn't seem as polished.  My cautious approval was short-lived.  When
>> Remmina, a VNC/RDP client that generally works very well, decided to die, I
>> lost every bit of control of Gnome 3.  Remmina is built on GTK (probably the
>> Gnome Tool Kit libraries for Gnome 2) and shouldn't have stopped in such a
>> debilitating fashion.  I couldn't reach other desktops, menus or the Gnome 3
>> dock using the mouse or the keyboard shortcuts.  The only graceful exit was
>> to jump to shell (Ctrl-Alt-F4) and kill the user I was logged in as.  I
>> tried this twice more, trying to see if I was missing something, but the
>> same thing happened.  Gnome 3 is not really ready for prime time.
>>
>>      I had previously tried "regressing" to Gnome 2 under other Ubuntu 12.04
>> and found that the Mate Desktop, a fork of Gnome 2, is the best way to do
>> it.  You can install Gnome 2 via the Ubuntu repositories, but certain bits
>> are missing, or just don't work correctly, probably because of conflicts
>> with Unity and its LDM desktop manager.  At http://mate-desktop.org/ you'll
>> see that the project has reached version 1.4.  It works very well, as you
>> would expect Gnome 2 to behave, and installation is trivial.
>>
>>      Gnome 2 is a great mature desktop environment that fosters productivity
>> - RedHat Enterprise Linux comes with it by default with good reason.  If
>> you're using Ubuntu 12.04 and don't like Unity, go straight to Mate Desktop
>> and don't waste your time playing with the others.
>>
>> -Jeff Mings
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