Linux Mint Touchs All Time High On DistroWatch, Will Ubuntu Recover?

Quoting: Quoting:...where you can get back pretty much the functionality of Gnome 2 which you need on a desktop.



Make sure the LXDE, XFCE and KDE people know about this, you "need" Gnome 2 functionality.

"GNOME 2 functionaity" is still available in GNOME 3, it's called GNOME panel, and GNOME Panel is what people believe is GNOME 2 since it was the face of GNOME 2.

GNOME 3 has GNOME Panel as well as GNOME Shell, it's just that now it's refered to as GNOME Classic or Fallback mode (by the GNOME 3 developers, who want you to see GNOME Panel as reduced functionality), but GNOME Panel has definately been upgraded to GNOME 3 and is part of the GNOME 3 codebase, along with GNOME Shell.

GNOME Panel can be accessed in any GNOME based distro by simply logging in to GNOME Classic or Fallback mode, the desktop you reach is GNOME Panel (it's the classic GNOME desktop we are all familiar with).

To access the panel properties you will need to use ALT + Right Mouse Click (or sometimes SUPER + ALT + Right mouse Click), that's another thing the GNOME developers have done to hide the functionality of the panel. Once you do that you will have access to the Panel properties and Add to panel applet, and can move the panel where you choose, and create additional panels if you also choose, and add and remove plugins.

I'm just waiting for the DockbarX developrs to upgrade to GNOME 3, so I can continue to use that plugin on my GNOME 3 Panel.

@TA - Your patience and willingness to turn gnome 3 into a usable product is to be commended. I hope the developers of gnome take note of, not to mention learn from, you.

@DrGeoffrey, after a long and somewhat bitter argument with bloke, on muktware, i finally discovered that GNOME 3 is actually useable, you just need to know where to look.

While the GNOME devs make sure we all see GNOME Shell as GNOME 3, the old panel (we all knew as GNOME 2) is still part of the code base and is readily available. GNOME 3 actually consists of 2 desktop styles. GNOME Shell, which we all see written about every day, in articles that describe new ways to make it useful, and GNOME Panel, the fully function desktop we all (GNOME users anyway) used to love.

Wow, I'm really confused now. So Gnome Panel is still there as it always was?

So if that's true, then why don't the Gnome devs come clean and make it more obvious then? It would avoid all that unnecessary bloodshed. I thought that the old Panel desktop was a radically cut down version that they were planning to trash at some point.

:S

Quoting:I thought that the old Panel desktop was a radically cut down version that they were planning to trash at some point.

They may be planning on trashing it (they haven't said as such), but all the functionality is there. They've made it less obvious, to be sure, in the hope, I suspect that no one will use it, or upgrade Panel plugins to GNOME 3. If they can fool enough people for long enough, I suspect they then have a legitimate excuse, that no one is using it, to trash it.

I'm just trying to blow their cover, at the moment.

Cinnamon looks like gnome fallback but harder to use at present. I hope Clem improves it so that if the gnome retreads err developers scrap gnome panel then we can just use cinnamon. Not sure what the forking means from a practical viewpoint. I presume it is a soft rather than hard fork (I just invented a term I think)

Cinnamon is nothing like GNOME Fall back or Classic mode (also known as GNOME Panel). Cinnamon is GNOME Shell with lots of addons, designed to make it more functional.

skelband wrote:So if that's true, then why don't the Gnome devs come clean and make it more obvious then?

Why would they want to do that? They want you to use Gnome3 Shell, because they are demigods and they have created the best DE UI ever created, and they know what's best for everyone. Those of you who resist Gnome Shell are like petulant little children, and need to be forced to use the One True DE that the Dear Leaders of Gnome have bequeathed upon us in their infinite mercy and wisdom.

TA

What you say about gnome-shell is right but the basic user view functionality is similar. There is a bottom panel which you can add application launcher icons to. There is a window switcher in the (top) panel for gnome fallback and in the bottom panel for cinnamon. The indicator applets appear in the right side of both bottom panels.

It is harder to add icons to the panel in cinnamon at present... You can still use old style applets in gnome fallback (eg weather and invest) but not cinnamon

@GERGE

You're mostly right.

Of course, World Domination will have to wait for the day when the likes of Full Circle Magazine start showing up on the grocery-store shelves, alongside the similar magazines for Windows and Apple/Mac. (As long as we don't also see the emergence of Linux-oriented versions of those Windows Guides on how to troubleshoot and fix common operating-system hassles and breakages, that will be OK, and I won't complain).

Quoting:and are they in love with Linux Mint or what?

I'm in love with Linux Mint, your point is?

@montezuma, the problem with Cinnamon, is not that it is by way of the addons, finally restoring some of the GNOME Panel functionality to GNOME Shell, but that you are still stuck with that awfull top panel, which cannot be moved or removed. It's baked into GNOME3 Shell, and until or unless someone works out how to remove it Cinnamon is still lipstick on a pig, in my very unhumble opinion.

TA

Huh? I don't see a top panel in Cinnamon. I can see the activities button top left hand corner but no panel....

are you looking at some screenshots or the actual desktop, I ask because the last time I checked out Cinnamon the top panel was there

No I am using it in Mint. The version is 1.1.3 which is the latest. Maybe it has changed since you last looked...

I'm just now looking at a screen shot http://i.techrepublic.com.com/blogs/cinnamon-13.png, That activities button needs to go before it becomes useful to me. The activities button is part of the top panel, so maybe they have set the top panel to minimum width.

What mystifies me is that Clement doesn't seem aware of the fact that GNOME Panel (what is referred to as GNOME 2) is available in the GNOME 3 code base. If they have actually forked GNOME 3, as is claimed, then surely someone would have noticed this by now. What actually appears to be the case is that a lot of developers have spent a lot of time attempting to replicate GNOME Panel with Addons to GNOME Shell, none of which actually touch the actual GNOME 3 code, but instead change configuration settings, and add applets.

Yeah that is what I have. I agree the activities button is pretty useless but I hardly notice it to be honest.

Clem seems pretty cluey to me so he would know about the issue you mention I suspect. I think the issue is that gnome-panel has been deprecated by the gnome developers so if it is removed later Clem needs a fallback position to preserve gnome 2 functionality within gnome 3.

He's already supporting MATE, which is a Fork of GNOME 2. It just seems to me that it would be easier to fork GNOME 3 and pull the Panel code (and depricate the Shell code) and continue work on that, rather than Fork GNOME 2 and port the code to GTK3., which appears to the intent. But I'm not a C developer so what would I know.