The Linux Mint distribution is switching to the Gnome 3 desktop after all of this time. Sure they are keeping the Gnome 2 desktop environment, but they are implementing the MATE fork of the Gnome 2 desktop, that will be trying to keep the familiar Gnome 2 desktop that everyone seems to love, despite the fact that the Gnome 2 MATE code is apparently incompatible with the Gnome 3 desktop, this might mean that you could not have both desktops installed at the same time. Linux Mint 11 had the Gnome 2.32.2 desktop, but now they are following after the lead of Fedora 15 and Ubuntu 11.04 and implementing the next generation desktop instead of staying with the older code. But I guess if the Gnome team have moved on then the Mint team will too. I have set up my Fedora Core 15 Lxde desktop to look just like the Gnome 2 desktop, just add another panel and move the panel applets around until you get the look just right. That will have to tide people over until the MATE Gnome 2 source fork is finished then someone could develop an Ubuntu based distribution that uses the Gnome 2 MATE fork.
That is the only hope for keeping the relatively fast Gnome 2 code alive and not just letting it die like the Gnome team have, I mean you have the Gnome 3 desktop and the Unity desktop that are different interfaces and they can be a bit confusing for new users. having no shortcut for the terminal and having to type “term” and then hitting RETURN is annoying when the Gnome 2 desktop allowed you to put a shortcut icon on the panel and have instant access to that application. The Gnome team do a good job of creating a desktop environment that is fun to theme and create wallpapers for, but with the Gnome 3 desktop they have really screwed the pooch. Once it was a fast and useful desktop, with the nice Metacity window manager and heaps of themes, now it only has one real theme and that is the one it comes with, having to install a third party tweak tool to set desktop themes and enable icons on the desktop really sucks. In Windows 7 you just right-click on the desktop and you can turn desktop icons on or off and setting themes is very easy, just like in KDE.
Maybe you should just install KDE and use that for your day to day operations. The KDE desktop does work a lot like Windows and if you have migrated from the Windows operating system to Linux then it will be very familiar indeed.
We want to see how much free space there is on a mounted drive. Easily done with the df(1) or disk free command as shown below.
~$ df -Hla /media/FADC6329DC62DF7F Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sdd2 160G 54G 106G 34% /media/FADC6329DC62DF7F
2 thoughts on “Linux Mint moving to Gnome 3.”