MATE Desktop 1.2 Released

[schmidtbag]

@phoen1x
Complaining about the appearance of a modern OS is an invalid complaint, because you can always tweak an OS to look however you want to some degree. If you don't like the default theme of KDE (or any DE for that matter), just change it.

This is the same problem with Ubuntu. Some people really hated the orange theme and didn't want to use Ubuntu specifically because of it, which is utter crap because first of all, the orange made ubuntu distinctive and secondly, just change the color if you don't like it.


@jayrules
I suppose they could call it that, its boring but it works.


@Imouto
Actually, I used XFCE on a very crappy system and thats how I knew it didn't perform much better than GNOME 2. But again, I haven't used it recently so I'm not sure how much it improved. IMO, LXDE is so much better at doing what XFCE tries to do. Its simpler, cleaner, a lot less CPU and RAM consuming, and more sleek. LXDE does lack many features, but it gets the job done. According to one of the LXDE devs, they said what really separates their project from XFCE is how LXDE tries to operate with as little dependencies as possible. XFCE, from what I've noticed, is littered with GNOME dependencies.

[phoen1x]

I dare to say that again. KDE can be tweaked to look like Gnome (be it classic or GShell). Overall it's a better desktop environment.

I prefer default setup and by default KDE looks ugly. That green refresh icon lol who created that crap? control icons in amarok? etc. That stupid kde menu, its look cheap and crappy. I know it can be tweaked but im too lazy for it. Why they can't make it look professional and not ugly by default?

[schmidtbag]

I prefer default setup and by default KDE looks ugly. That green refresh icon lol who created that crap? control icons in amarok? etc. That stupid kde menu, its look cheap and crappy. I know it can be tweaked but im too lazy for it.

So.... you have the patience to use linux but you don't have the patience to search for a different theme which might only take 2 minutes? Also whats wrong with the green refresh icon? It looks fine to me. A little bright and distracting but it still has a nice appearance.

[johnc]

I'll probably pull the trigger on Unity once Ubuntu 12.04 is finally released. I think eventually the downsides of Unity and Gnome Shell will be ironed out as more people build extensions and hacks, but it's going to take some time.

[xpander]

been using MATE for about 6 months. and im damn happy that i can continue using my old gnome2.
since 1.1 there are no big issues anymore also.
i do not use compiz tho.
some applets not ported to MATE yet, but are easy to compile with the use of migrate script on MATE wiki page.
so my dockbarX, panflute and caja-dropbox work fine also and i have all like it used to be with gnome2

[uid313]

I use GNOME 3 but with gnome-panel instead of gnome-shell.
Then I get a desktop environment that resemble that of GNOME 2 but with the benefits of GNOME 3 and Gtk 3.

[Kivada]

When your computer is fast enough, you may not notice the difference between gnome2/MATE and XFCE. XFCE is now 4.8 and they have done very well to keep their DE light and useful. xfdesktop and thunar in particular open much faster than nautilus. Also, XFCE have build in a compositor and can handle desktop switching etc. It includes not many features, but just enough common ones so that I do not need to install compiz.

As you are using KDE, XFCE is definitely not for you. KDE is full of features.
But I guess for Linus and others that like XFCE, simpliness itself is a feature.

I'm using a 2Ghz Pentium 4 Northwood, a mid range CPU form a decade ago, w/ 1Gb of 266Mhz ram and have used XFCE, LXDE and Mate on it, it is not fast by any means yet I've never noticed any real performance benefit from using anything less then Gnome2.

[Kivada]

Mind explaining your definition of "clusterfuck"? Because to me, that's like saying "this is bad" and leaving it at that, which isn't a reason. I can see why some people wouldn't like the naming scheme of it but what is nice is it lets you know what is part of the KDE suite and what isn't. Besides, do you have a better name for many of the things? For example, kolourpaint. What else are you gonna call it? Colourpaint is just plain boring and you can't call it "Paint" due to confusion with mspaint. GNOME has a similar naming scheme that start with G or GN.

How about being creative with the name instead of dementedly twisting every possible word to start with a fucking "K". Think distinctive names like Firefox. Pidgin, Nightingale, Vuze, Transmageddon, Gimp, LibreOffice, Audacity, Transmission, Celtx, Abiword, Filezilla, Artista, Thunderbird.

I've always hated the KDE naming convention ever since I first stared using Linux nearly a decade ago, the only feature of the desktop I liked at the start was the option to have a Mac-like top bar layout.

As of the KDE 4 series, the UI has become incredibly slow with no benefit. Maybe there is if using a composited desktop, but I hate composited desktops.

[ChrisXY]

KDE 4.4 was the first release that was pretty good and didn't have many problems, and today I'd say my only complaint about KDE is how its a little too heavy (with all built-in features on). I'd really like to know what people's problems are with it as of its current release.

I often have problems with the little things. In gnome2 panel, why would the applets not be "pushed" to the right and to the left when changing to a bigger resolution? In KDE so far I don't have many of those details that bother me.

But programs from the KDE core or from the KDE "ecosystem" are still the most unstable I see around here. kmix segfaults often when adding or removing pulseaudio network sinks. akregator sometimes segfaults for no reason. In KDE 4.8.2 when I enable nepomuk/virtuoso kdeinit4 will crash as soon as I start krunner. I have recently again tried to use Kmail. It doesn't send emails, just disables every single widget on the screen and then sits there until I kill it.

Too many KDE related applications, not enaugh developers.

And yet another KDE related project: calligra 2.4... I have segfaulted calligrasheets and calligrastage both with simply dragging a spreadsheet "shape" in the working area. Could not reproduce it later. But calligrastage will consistently segfault when I enable the "presenter view", start a presentation and click on the left slide in the presenter view.

I recently "discovered" kontact. Nice gui for several things. But the ktimetracker thing there just doesn't work.

Also recently I decided to finally "fix" my old akonadi. It was slow, had undeletable mail accounts, and sometimes just segfaulted for no reason. akonadiconsole showed in the log that the mysql schemas were not really consistent with the new akonadi versions so I simply deleted the whole akonadi stuff from ~/.config/akonadi and recreated all configuraions. Turns out it doesn't store everything there, some mail filters went amok and only stopped wasting 100% cpu when I deleted the remaining agents in akonadiconsole. It kind of works now but my feeling that the whole thing is way too complicated to work well for everyone has been reinforced.

Plasma has stopped regularily segfaulting for me not before KDE 4.6. It then segfaulted until 4.7 I believe when trying to use the grid workspace layout but even that is stable now.

I have nothing against KDE per se. But everything in the KDE "ecosystem" seems to need a looong time to get somewhat stable.

[Hamish Wilson]

I have been using Xfce as my main desktop for a bit and I think it has a pretty good future, and an opportunity to become better than Gnome 2. It already is in some respects, and it just needs to get a few annoyances wrinkled out.

Gnome 3 and KDE will do their own thing, as will LXDE. Posting anything more inflammatory than that simple fact is pointless.