Cinnamon 1.4 released

Posted Mar 20, 2012 2:43 UTC (Tue) by donbarry (guest, #10485)
Parent article: Cinnamon 1.4 released

I'd simply like to say: thank you, Cinnamon authors, for giving us choice.

My experiences with Gnome3 over the last month, after using Gnome{1|2} for ten years, are not positive. To me, this is clearly a case of less being less -- not more. I simply cannot be productive within its straitjacket. Perhaps users who see the desktop as cellphone: play with one app for several minutes, switch to one other for several more minutes of amusement, will find it a useful paradigm -- I do not.

But the beauty of free software -- that one can preserve the strengths of the Gnome internals that remain under development while slicing the bonds of the straitjacket -- clearly show here.

Hurrah, Cinnamon developers! Your efforts will find nothing but praise from this quarter.

Cinnamon 1.4 released

Posted Mar 20, 2012 7:24 UTC (Tue) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (1 responses)

The choice was given to you by the license as well.

Cinnamon 1.4 released

Posted Mar 20, 2012 19:22 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

The choice was given by the license, but without competent developers stepping up to the plate, it would be very difficult for most people to actually exercise that choice. That's why we should say "thanks".

Cinnamon 1.4 released

Posted Mar 20, 2012 8:02 UTC (Tue) by jku (subscriber, #42379) [Link] (3 responses)

"Perhaps users who see the desktop as cellphone: play with one app for several minutes, switch to one other for several more minutes of amusement, will find it a useful paradigm".

No need to start the whole GNOME3 discussion here too but I will offer friendly advice: belittling the other side is rarely a good opening gambit, expressing ones frustration is usually possible without doing that.

Some people find GNOME3 a productive environment while you and others do not.

Cinnamon 1.4 released

Posted Mar 20, 2012 13:11 UTC (Tue) by nevets (subscriber, #11875) [Link] (2 responses)

> expressing ones frustration is usually possible without doing that

It is possible, but it is very hard to do. Especially when you feel that you are being belittled when the developers just tell you to deal with it, you will eventually like it. That causes more hostility than frustration.

But I agree, keeping emotion out of the discussion is probably more productive. I know I have said a lot of things about Gnome3 out of emotion than anything else. But it just feels so good to do that :-)

Cinnamon 1.4 released

Posted Mar 20, 2012 14:02 UTC (Tue) by danieldk (subscriber, #27876) [Link] (1 responses)

> It is possible, but it is very hard to do. Especially when you feel that you are being belittled when the developers just tell you to deal with it, you will eventually like it.

Well, there is a historical precedent here. I remember the anger GNOME 2.0 was sometimes met with. Nowadays people want to revert back to GNOME 2 ;).

The problem is more that change is so abrupt, which gives a period where GNOME 3 is not ready for the general public and GNOME 2 is unmaintained. A slightly more evolutionary approach would have helped, I guess.

Still, I like GNOME 3.

Cinnamon 1.4 released

Posted Mar 20, 2012 14:18 UTC (Tue) by nevets (subscriber, #11875) [Link]

I remember the conversion from 1 to 2, and 2 was very busted. The complaints were that there was a lot of functionality that was lost with that conversion. The result was that gnome2 went through a very painful transformation to bring back those lost features.

Yes people want to go back to gnome2, but not to the gnome2 that was released in the beginning, but to the gnome2 that grew to do what the users want.

Yes it looks very familiar, but this time around it seems that the developers are trying harder not to listen to the complaints. Instead we have Cinnamon and addons that seems to move gnome to what users want. Yes, it does seem that history is repeating itself. But I don't want to go through that pain again, and just moved to xfce. Maybe I'll come back after gnome is done with the growing pains.

Cinnamon 1.4 released

Posted Mar 20, 2012 9:23 UTC (Tue) by Rehdon (guest, #45440) [Link]

I couldn't agree more: Cinnamon 1.4 is fast, stable and very usable. Add any dock of your choice, and it's a complete, working, very effective alternative to Gnome Shell / Unity.

Also the devs are very receptive to user feedback, striking a fair balance between the two extremes of being the users' slave coding machines (more a convenient strawman than anything real imho) and being the coding elite graciously donating the fruits of their visionary wisdom to the masses (the other way round here ;)

The only thing I miss is the Zeitgeist extension for Gnome 3 that I started using in Linux Mint 12, I wonder how that could be implemented since the whole overlay thing concept is gone.

Keep up the good work Cinnamon devs! :D

Rehdon

Cinnamon 1.4 released

Posted Mar 20, 2012 12:45 UTC (Tue) by danieldk (subscriber, #27876) [Link]

Perhaps users who see the desktop as cellphone: play with one app for several minutes, switch to one other for several more minutes of amusement, will find it a useful paradigm -- I do not.

Actually, there is fairly little in GNOME 3 that makes it accomodate cell-phones. In fact, it's quite the opposite:

It makes the user-interface more keyboard driven, by offering Spotlight/GNOME Do-like search as a central user interface element.
It makes focuses on managing may Windows, with Exposé-like window management and application/window switching behavior.

Despite its deficiencies (e.g. fairly limited applets), I like it much more for use with big screens (plus keyboard) than GNOME 2.