[olug] On topicish

[Obi-Wan]

I've been running Ubuntu on my desktop for years.  Just upgraded from 
13.10 to 14.04 last night.  Gnome2 was my favorite, paired with compiz.  
When Unity came out, I vomited, then switched to KDE on my desktop and 
Fedora16+Cinnamon on my old laptop.  I'm forced to use XFCE on Debian 
Wheezy at work.

I find XFCE to be very crude.  It feels like somebody's college project 
that got abandoned when the semester ended.

I find this old version of Cinnamon to be very feature-poor. Maybe a new 
version on a newer OS would be better.  I'm planning to try Mint when 
the latest version goes general in a few weeks. I don't do much with my 
laptop, so Cinnamon is adequate there.

I find KDE (which I've used a couple times over the decades, with 
similar results) to be very feature-full, but also very disorganized, 
and with a pathetic selection of panel widgets.

I'd heard good things about MATE, so I've been running it on my desktop 
for a couple weeks along with compiz.  I find it to be buggy as all get 
out.  Compiz and MATE both segfault regularly, and some of the features 
that I loved in Gnome2+compiz (like having an edge resistance when you 
change workspaces by rolling your mouse off the screen) don't exist in 
MATE+compiz.  I never imagined how annoying that would be to lose!  I'm 
done with MATE. It's just not ready for prime time.

I may try a newer version of Cinnamon on my desktop, but if it hasn't 
improved significantly since the version in Fedora 16, that won't last long.

I'm planning to try Enlightenment as soon as its repos start providing 
it for 14.04.  I'm in no mood to build it from source.

What else should I try?  My one hard requirement is that it MUST allow 
me to switch workspaces by rolling my mouse off the edge of the screen 
in the direction of the workspace I'm aiming for.  I bounce around a lot 
when I'm working, and aiming for a little panel widget or moving both 
hands to the keyboard is a real momentum killer.

On 05/29/2014 10:35 PM, Mikey wrote:
> I've been using the MATE desktop on my Ubuntu system for the last 2 months
> and definitely prefer this desktop to the Unity that comes with Ubuntu.
> However, there have been some minor hiccups with the MATE service
> temporarily stopping periodically, audio driver doesn't work unless I do a
> system test, and then it works beautifully. Other than that, I have enjoyed
> using the MATE desktop as my prefered Linux GUI.
>
> Just my $.02 cents worth......
>
>
> On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 12:48 PM, Justin Reiners <justin at hotlinesinc.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Looking into it, I might like MATE, as I miss the old gnome 2 look of
>> Ubuntu. Ill install it in a VM and run it for a while.
>>
>>
>> On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 12:22 PM, Justin Reiners <justin at hotlinesinc.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I have not tried the MATE version, may have to though. I wish there were
>>> more enlightenment based distros to play with, so far it is my favorite,
>>> and very lightweight.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 12:19 PM, Obi-Wan <obiwan at jedi.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Is Mint / MATE any more stable than the Cinnamon version?  I was just
>>>> about to replace Fedora on my laptop with Mint / MATE.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 05/29/2014 12:17 PM, Justin Reiners wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Linux Mint Cinnamon is very unstable, I have locked it up/crashed
>>>>> Cinnamon
>>>>> many many times just by turning up the volume. I wish it was more stable,
>>>>> it is one of my favorite distros.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 12:05 PM, Rob Townley <rob.townley at gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>   LinuxMint cinnamon stable? Recently while configuring a bunch of different
>>>>> ethernet interfaces on a laptop i had to kill the networking service
>>>>> which
>>>>> locked up the javascript based Cinnamon GUI.   Luckily, ctrl-alt-F2
>>>>> still
>>>>> worked because had to lock up the GUI numerous times.
>>>>>
>>>>> LinuxMint websites do not use any HTTPS even though StartSSL has free
>>>>> SSL
>>>>> versions.
>>>>>
>>>>> Cannot recommend LinuxMint.
>>>>> On May 28, 2014 5:20 PM, "Justin Reiners" <justin at hotlinesinc.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>   Debian isn't bad at all. Repos are quite dated. Most of the time more
>>>>>   so
>>>>> than centos. But debian is a mighty stable distro. Centos for servers
>>>>> and
>>>>> use Ubuntu variants for desktop use for more bleeding edge. Just sick
>>>>> of
>>>>> unity. I miss 10.04... Still have an old server on that distro. Never
>>>>> rebooted other than kernel updates.
>>>>>
>>>>> Too many of the Debian/Ubuntu offshoots are too unstable for a daily
>>>>> driver. I guess it is all in what you use it for.
>>>>>
>>>>> Sadly Ubuntu/mint is pretty stable. More so mint than Ubuntu for daily
>>>>> PC usage IMHO.


-- 
*Ben "Obi-Wan" Hollingsworth* obiwan at jedi.com <mailto:obiwan at jedi.com> 
www.Jedi.com <http://www.jedi.com>
The stuff of earth competes for the allegiance I owe only to the
Giver of all good things, so if I stand, let me stand on the
promise that You will pull me through. /-- Rich Mullins/