LWN: Comments on "Linux Mint 18.3 released"

Linux Mint 18.3 released

ajmacleod — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 21:06:55 +0000

Indeed, I think KDE 3 was pretty much the high point of Linux on the desktop; everything since then has just been differently broken and more bloated versions of the same (or less) functionality.

For myself, I ditched the full blown desktop environments completely and went back to WindowMaker which does everything I need in a rock-solid manner whilst consuming a trivial handful of RAM (grateful thanks to those who took over maintaining such a valuable WM a few years back.)

wheel-reinventing

nix — Thu, 30 Nov 2017 21:53:11 +0000

Well, the componentware stuff was a big, big part of it at the beginning. GNOME actually *stood* for the GNU Network Object Model Environment... but apparently these days nobody bothers with networks except talking to remote web servers: people add dependencies on working inotify etc all the time (which works less well than you might wish on an NFS-mounted $HOME...)

wheel-reinventing

flussence — Thu, 30 Nov 2017 18:43:26 +0000

Are you sure you weren't thinking of CORBA? It was a required part of GNOME for a long time, but never caught on outside of it because everyone else had things better optimised for their use case - most GUI programs made use of existing X11 IPC (and were actually cross-desktop!), KDE had its DCOP thing. Even to this day GTK2 does its own thing for changing themes at runtime, ignoring DBus entirely.

wheel-reinventing

bandrami — Wed, 29 Nov 2017 17:44:23 +0000

Anybody else remember when GNOME (capitalized as such) was just an attempt at a desktop-neutral object broker for Unix-y operating systems?

Linux Mint 18.3 released

eru — Wed, 29 Nov 2017 05:11:06 +0000

Manjaro's XFCE integration sure looks nice (played with it last night in VirtualBox). Only drawback I found is Manjaro does not appear to supply Finnish translations, which matters for some use cases I have.

wheel-reinventing

swilmet — Tue, 28 Nov 2017 17:14:47 +0000

> Although you can't help feeling there's a lot of wheel-reinventing going on, as desktop features that existed in 2003 are now reimplemented in 'brand new' rewritten apps, etc.

That's why I'm trying to convince more GNOME developers to develop more shared libraries, with higher-level APIs (that's what I'm doing in the field of text editors):
https://blogs.gnome.org/swilmet/2016/06/18/thoughts-on-th...

Linux Mint 18.3 released

rahulsundaram — Tue, 28 Nov 2017 15:39:15 +0000

"Not necessarily anything, but the administration tools and possibly some other nice features of a distribution usually favour the "headline desktop"

Xfce is a more minimalistic desktop environment with far fewer contributors and by definition, it isn't going to have all the bells and whistles of either GNOME or KDE.

In the case of Fedora, the project has moved away from custom tools, in favor of integrating functionality into either the desktop or a common administrative interface such as cockpit. So for updates, you could be running say GNOME Software in Xfce which works fine or you could be running cockpit which is just a web interface and isn't tied to any particular desktop environment.

Linux Mint 18.3 released

tjc — Tue, 28 Nov 2017 14:59:52 +0000

> It would be nice if there were a popular distribution where XFCE is a "first-class citizen".

Manjaro?

Linux Mint 18.3 released

eru — Tue, 28 Nov 2017 10:34:24 +0000

What am I missing out?

Not necessarily anything, but the administration tools and possibly some other nice features of a distribution usually favour the "headline desktop", in that to use them, you effectively have to install most of the desktop code you do not otherwise use as dependencies. For example, in the version of Linux Mint I have tried, integration with Dropbox works in the Cinnamon and MATE file managers, but not the XFCE one. Such minor niggles aways remind XFCE is not the one the distro authors lavish most attention on (and Mint actually seems to be better than others I have tried for XFCE usage).

Linux Mint 18.3 released

lkundrak — Tue, 28 Nov 2017 10:05:15 +0000

What makes a desktop environment a "first-class citizen"?

Despite not being overly familiar with Xfce, I sometimes run it for various reasons. In those cases I grab either Fedora or Debian, both of which provide install media with Xfce. It seems to work as designed by upstream. What am I missing out?

Linux Mint 18.3 released

lkundrak — Tue, 28 Nov 2017 10:00:53 +0000

> Anyway, aren't all Mint releases now LTS, since they're based on Ubuntu LTS releases? Mint 19 will be based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, so presumably will itself be LTS again :)

According to Wikipedia [1] (bottom of the "Release History" table really) they are doing multiple releases off a single Ubuntu base (presumably doing updates in the part of the stack they're upstream of -- the Cinnamon desktop). If they follow the pattern I'd expect them to eventually do a Mint LTS release off Ubuntu 18.04, after a few non-LTS releases off the same base.

[1] Linux Mint version history <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Mint_version_history>

Linux Mint 18.3 released

patrick_g — Tue, 28 Nov 2017 09:53:36 +0000

Perhaps Xubuntu?

Linux Mint 18.3 released

eru — Tue, 28 Nov 2017 07:28:43 +0000

Linux desktops were already very good some years back,

Yes. I used to be quite happy with KDE3 on Mandriva and CentOS5 about a decade ago. But then the project essentially broke KDE for a long time, Gnome UI went all funny, and Mandriva got discontinued. I'm now mostly using XFCE at work and home, including on a Mint installation in the mini laptop I lug around everywhere. Looks like XFCE Mint was not yet released, I hope it does not mean it will not be supported. I had a peek at MATE, it is OK, but uses a bit more resources for doing basically the same thing as XFCE. It would be nice if there were a popular distribution where XFCE is a "first-class citizen".

Linux Mint 18.3 released

alspnost — Mon, 27 Nov 2017 22:19:16 +0000

Mint is great, and they've done some nice work with Cinnamon. Although you can't help feeling there's a lot of wheel-reinventing going on, as desktop features that existed in 2003 are now reimplemented in 'brand new' rewritten apps, etc. Linux desktops were already very good some years back, but it feels like there's been nothing genuinely new for a while now. Anyway, aren't all Mint releases now LTS, since they're based on Ubuntu LTS releases? Mint 19 will be based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, so presumably will itself be LTS again :)