tanmay.01 wrote:XFCE is going to stay with gtk2 atleast for 1 more release cycle.
Mate is good, but resource consumption and the default apps are not that good.
Testing Siduction 13.1 xfce edition...
I liked GNOME 2. Liked it so much that I was a bit put out when GNOME 3 happened. I tried MATE on someone's recommendation - they told me that it was a "continuation" of GNOME 2, that it was like it. I guess it was
like it, but it sure wasn't IT. The experience of trying it... I suppose if I saw someone across the mall, that kind of looked like my girlfriend, and when I got to her the light was bad so that I did not realize that she wasn't, and I took her into my arms and kissed her, and she slapped my face... I'd probably experience a strange bit of déjà vu now, lol.
Luckily, I then tried Xfce, which doesn't try to look/act like anything except Xfce. IMHO, it seems to be kin in spirit to GNOME 2 - it doesn't ask a lot from your hardware but still manages to deliver a quality, stable desktop environment. And the developers must be old enough to vote, apparently, because it's not full of cheezy crap that does nothing to aid the user, either. It turns out that I actually like it
better than GNOME 2.
Siduction... Is that Debian-based? I thought about trying Debian out. I've been using Mint 14 Xfce for a while now, and I really like it and it's got a lot of newer bits in it - or it did, anyway; it's based off Ubuntu Quantal and they've got Raring now, so IDK. But I wanted to keep current on Xfce versions, so I added the 4.10 PPA. Then I found the 4.12 PPA and saw that it had a lot of newer stuff, so I added that one. Then I learned about some newer bits, but I would have to download a tar(?) and figure out how to compile, make, bake, somesuch to add it to my system; and I've tried several times in the past to follow instructions and compile various things, and it never worked, so I want to avoid that. So I thought maybe Debian has the newest bits of Xfce. After all, it's got several versions from stable all the way up through experimental. Considering that Xfce 4.10 is incredibly stable, I figured it would be in "stable" and that the things in the 4.10 and 4.12 PPAs - themselves being completely stable - would either also be in stable or would be in one of the Debian versions that was closer to "stable" than "experimental."
Imagine my surprise when I checked the Debian Wiki's Xfce page and learned that the basic Xfce 4.10 isn't even available except for in "Experimental." Therefore, I'd guess that the newer things that are in the Xfce 4.10 and 4.12 will - eventually - make it to Debian (in "Experimental," lol)... But that I will probably get to experience another birthday or two before it happens. Makes me wonder if the folks at Debian are
experimenting with the printing press yet or if they still employ teams of scribes.
I guess what I'm trying to say is... Wouldn't moving to a Debian base be a big step backward, at least in terms of being able to offer current versions of things (with their current features, which assume the existence of current versions of other things, which assume...)? Or at least a scuttle off to the side, if it means TheeMahn has to do extra work to maintain custom repositories instead of just being able to point toward much of the Ubuntu ones for a lot of components/apps?
Besides, given the law of averages, the folks at Ubuntu are likely to get, well,
something right. Any day now. Honest. Err... Maybe
.
I can understand the general frustration level with Ubuntu - I have, after all, tried it a few times, lol. But it probably does save a lot of work and repeated effort to base the distro on it.
I wonder if TheeMahn has ever thought about working with the people that produce Mint? It seems to have a comparable level of refinement (IOW, they also stomp out Ubuntu's forest fires) to Ultimate Edition. I cannot speak for the level of eye candy in it - or lack thereof - because I'm not interested enough in such things to have bothered to check. But in terms of being able to do the job, it's like a deluxe Swiss Army Knife - and in terms of stability, it's about as breakable as your average anvil. And at the same time, it seems to use (some) newer components than Ultimate Edition does if one compares .ISOs that were available and current at the same time. Now I'm going to assume that the Mint folks aren't any smarter than Thee, lol. So their ability to use newer things and still make it all work together... Maybe it's because there might be more people developing Mint than there are developing Ultimate Edition? If that's the case, maybe they would be receptive to the idea of sharing some of the work that both camps have to do with fixing Ubuntu before it makes an adequate core for the respective distros? That would probably be more helpful to TheeMahn than the Mint team, since TheeMahn does most (all? all except for the artwork? I can't remember) of the work on Ultimate Edition himself, IIRC. But I think I read that TheeMahn has written several apps or some tools, if he wished to allow them to use some portion of those in Mint (with proper credit, of course), that could be helpful in balancing the levels of benefit.
Just thinking with my fingers. As always, whatever TheeMahn thinks is best probably really is....
Posted: Wed May 22, 2013 11:37 pm
