Gnome replaces Unity

[Liam Proven]

On 16 October 2017 at 21:43, Bret Busby <bret.busby at gmail.com> wrote:

> I do not know what version of gedit, that is, but I use gedit, and,
> mine looks slightly different and, mine looks more usable.

I think the title/toolbar merge was around 3.20. Not sure.

> When gnome was changed to the dingbat version - I think it is version
> 3, designed to make it useless and user-hostile,

Hwh. Yes, it was 3.0.

> I went through months
> of trying to find a usable interface, and was referred to MATE, and
> had, since about Ubuntu 12.04, I think, switched to UbuntuMATE. I am
> currently using v16.04.x .
>
> I have it configured to suit me, so it has the taskbar and the panel,
> across the bottom of the screen, where they belong, and I think the
> "theme" would be referred to, as Win95-like . And, I have the
> drop-down menu names across the top, where they belong, and, it works
> fine, for me.

That's fine, that's the GNOME 2/Maté default. It's wasteful of space though.

> Others may want things differently.

Here's a default Ubuntu Maté desktop:

https://ubuntu-mate.org/gallery/Screenshots/06_CAJA.png

Here's a Mint Maté desktop:

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-IIIg_2coC_M/Upi0zP2r1aI/AAAAAAAAGSY/NzifmSgi3oU/s1000/mint-mate-3.jpg

Note that in Mint, because the 2 panels are combined, there's way less
wasted space. There's one combined menu at the bottom left corner,
with all the contents of all  3 menus in the top bar from Ubuntu. Then
there come a few app-launch icons, however many you want. Then comes
the window switcher that the bottom panel has on Ubuntu anyway. Then
comes the status area from the top panel.

All the same functionality, literally half the space.

I'm not telling you it's the right way to do it. I'm just saying that
it's how I did it, because I want as much of that vertical space as
possible.

This is how I prefer it:

http://www.knetfeder.de/linux/img/xfce-deskbar-gr.png

That's called a deskbar.

It's the combined top and bottom panels, but on the left instead. Uses
cheap horizontal space, but no vertical space at all, no top panel,
and remains more readable even with a dozen app buttons -- they don't
need to shrink down to remain visible. I think if the panel gets very
full, you get 2 columns of window buttons.

Here's how it looks on Windows:

http://thismatter.com/tutorials/software/windows-xp/images/managi6.jpg

The snag is that neither GNOME 2 not Maté nor Cinnamon (nor KDE,
LXDE/LXQt or Enlightenment or any other Linux desktop I know) can do
this. Xfce can with ease, though. So I use Xfce now and in time I will
probably switch to Xubuntu.

> And, I use some gnome applications, like gedit (and, while I could use
> it, I used gFTP, but, it lacked a functionality that was required when
> I switched hosting ISP, so I had to switch to filezilla, for FTP-ing
> up web sites), because I prefer the gnome applications, when they
> work.

Maté has them all.

> It is a shame that gnome3 was designed to make it user-hostile, losing
> the user-friendliness that gnome2 had.

Well, I don't like it either, but I don't think it's _hostile_. It's
_massively_ less customisable, though. I dislike that and I dislike
their default look-and-feel.

> But, the trend in software development, now, appears to be to design
> software to suit the developers, and, to cause suffering to the users.

I do know what you mean.

I recently gave KDE 5 another try.

You can no longer have a panel that spans 2 monitors. The
functionality has been _removed_ since KDE3:

https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?t=38969

This amazes me. Making new versions _less_ capable than before seems
very wrong to me.

> Anyway, my recommendation, for people. who. like me, believe that
> modern computers should be user-friendly, and, thence, easy to use, is
> to use appropriately configured UbuntuMATE, with easy to use
> applications installed.

I can't disagree. It's clean, smart-looking and works. For newbies you
can lock everything into position, which you can't on Xfce or LXDE.

-- 
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