Linux Mint 21.3 and Zorin 17 are beta buddies

Devs at well-loved distros Mint and Zorin are hard at work, with Mint 21.3 expected before the holidays, although Zorin OS 17 may take a little longer. Their respective betas show both are shaping up nicely and boast attractive desktops. Both Linux Mint and Zorin OS are based on Ubuntu LTS versions, and are developed in the …

[Throatwarbler Mangrove]

Zorin

I liked Zorin well enough that I paid for it, then, out of nowhere, it would only use the default GNOME theme. Given that I purchased it entirely because it resembled Windows sufficiently to be given to my wife to use, this constituted a major issue. Your $50 does not get you actual support, it turns out, so I was in the unenviable position of soliciting help from the entirely unhelpful Zorin forums and otherwise Googling for a solution. After trying everything that was recommended, the only thing I could think of was to reinstall, which was not an option, so I'm stuck with the horrid abortion of the standard GNOME desktop. My advice is to stick to Mint; the fact that it has a larger development team and is more widely used means that issues are more likely to be addressed and resolved.

[Throatwarbler Mangrove]

Re: Zorin

Yes, this is part of the problem: people who don't understand the issue I'm having offer suggestions that aren't relevant and don't work.

[ludditus]

Re: Zorin

To me, any KDE distro is close enough to Windows. If anything, GNOME is the most dissimilar, because Nautilus/Files is the only file manager in the known universe that lacks a Compact List View, something that even Windows 3.0 had. Sure thing, Cinnamon's Nemo fixes that, but Cinnamon's GUI is so poorly thought that too many clicks are needed to see and change some settings.

OTOH, in 2007 I taught a 70-y.o. lady to use GNOME2. Don't underestimate your wife; she most certainly isn't stupid.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Zorin

[Author here]

> If anything, GNOME is the most dissimilar

This is intentional and by design.

It was only 2007, but the project seems to have forgotten and stoutly denies it, but it was official policy.

I've discussed it at length:

https://www.theregister.com/Print/2013/06/03/thank_microsoft_for_linux_desktop_fail/

The TL;DR summary is...

* Microsoft threatened to sue because the desktop design in Linux too closely resembled Windows 95 which is MS original design work.

https://www.theregister.com/2007/05/14/microsoft_oss_patent_number/

* It said it the company has "about 265" patents on it but would not name them:

https://www.theregister.com/2007/05/24/microsoft_novell_patents/

* The Reg warned about it in 2003:

https://www.theregister.com/2003/12/08/microsoft_aiming_ibmscale_patent_program/

* SUSE signed a patent-sharing deal and was safe:

https://www.theregister.com/2006/11/20/microsoft_claims_linux_code/

* Linspire signed up too:

https://www.theregister.com/2007/06/14/microsoft_linspire/

* TurboLinux signed up:

https://www.theregister.com/2007/10/24/microsoft_linux_deal/

* Red Hat wouldn't sign:

https://www.theregister.com/2007/06/28/microsoft_red_hat_patents/

* And got sued:

https://www.theregister.com/2007/10/12/novell_red_hat_linux_patent_sued/

I should dig up the history and do a retrospective some time.

Anyway, RH and Canonical were the 2 big distro vendors who refused to sign. As a result they both started work on *non* Windows like desktops PDQ.

Canonical tried to work with GNOME but GNOME rebuffed all Canonical's contributions, so Canonical went it alone.

Result, in 2011, both GNOME 3 and Unity shipped.

Both share strikingoly similar lists of features removed:

- no taskbar;

- no start menu;

- no hierarchical program launcher;

- no system tray;

- no menu bar in the top of app windows;

- no window control menu at top left;

- no max/min/close buttons at top right;

- no buttons for open app windows;

- no desktop folder full of drives;

- no desktop folder full of network computers;

Etc. etc.

All this was new in Win95 (or earlier versions) and was therefore easily patented by MS.

Right afterwards, given a few years to get them ready, the 2 big Gtk-based desktop vendors put out new desktops will all that stuff taken out.

Both companies' representatives angrily claim that this was entirely coincidental and just so happened and there is no causal connection.

OTOH, if they said it _was_ a response this would be admission of guilt, so senior execs were doubtless told not to under any circumstances. Junior ones probably just weren't told at all, and FOSS programmers gladly fork existing projects to do things their own way and so need no encouragement.

and it also

[Mage]

Re: Zorin

"All this was new in Win95 (or earlier versions) and was therefore easily patented by MS."

Only because the USPTO is broken.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Zorin

Most of the desktop stuff was available on the Amiga in 1985, Microsoft did nothing new with the Windows interface.

[Ian 55]

Re: Zorin

"FOSS programmers gladly fork existing projects to do things their own way and so need no encouragement."

It'd be funny if it weren't so painfully true.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Zorin

[Author here]

> it would only use the default GNOME theme.

Do you mean theme, as in colours and visual appearance, or do you mean the default GNOME desktop layout?

I don't do themes or skins at all and know little about that.

All the desktop layout customisation in Zorin OS is GNOME extensions and it sounds like something kiboshed those for you. Since AFAICS GNOME lacks any form of coherent extensions management and lacks a safe mode or anything to disable them, saving all docuements and settings, nuking the user profile and creating a new one might be your only choice.

Or just nuking the GNOME settings dot-directories and seeing if it resets to defaults?

[David 132]

Hypnotix?

I adore Mint - it's my daily driver and powers my NAS - but it's interesting that the article calls out improvements to Hypnotix, the IPTV player app.

In my experience I've never been able to get Hypnotix to work, no matter what country or channel I use, VPN or no. It just spins and times out.

So "improved" in my view could mean as little as "now will at least play Albania's 8th-most-popular paint-drying channel".

Still, a pint for Clement & the Mint team.

[Anonymous Coward]

Scripts are already supported

> "Cinnamon 6.0 includes a new type of add-on, called "Actions", which add new options to the Nemo file manager's right-click menu."

Just add some scripts in ~/.local/share/nemo/scripts and you already have these (since eons). Subfolders map to sub-menus. Typically (a bash example, but python, node, lua... work too):

IFS=$'\n'; for f in ${NEMO_SCRIPT_SELECTED_FILE_PATHS}; do stuff done

[Liam Proven]

Re: Scripts are already supported

Nice! I didn't know that, but then, I don't go into that level of customisation. I have too many computers and it's too much work to sync changes from machine to machine.

Maybe this is just a formal way to package them and install/uninstall the packages, then?

[Mockup1974]

>whose parents moved thence from Ukraine

Isn't the correct word "thither"?

[Bitbeisser]

Stop that sillyness or Liam is going to write the next article in the style of Chaucer... :P

[Liam Proven]

> the next article in the style of Chaucer

Challenge accepted.

Slight snag: my esteemed editor may not accept.

[Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch]

You're right. They moved thither. (To there, where there = RoI)

You could argue that 'there' is one of the few English nouns that still has a declension.

N. & Acc. There

Gen. Thereof / There's (not 'there is', but 'of there')

D. Thither

Ab. Thence

Here and there follow the same pattern. It sounds so weird to an English ear to hear it described that way that we just treat and think of them as separate words

[Liam Proven]

> You're right. They moved thither.

Ну, чорт.

[Ian 55]

For someone on MATE, how much change would they notice moving to Cinnamon?

Asking for some kids...

[MonocleRB]

Mint UI's been stale for a while

see title

It's definitely not a bad UI, definitely the top three in the Linux world, but there's a reason Linux Mint isn't the most popular distro anymore. Still very popular — I have a couple friends who swear by it — but it's lost some of its share to Manjaro and a little to MX.

Only reason I stopped using it after a week is the icons are rather ugly and mismatched. I later discovered the Papyrus icon PPA, which is basically perfect, but by then I was hooked on Manjaro with KDE Plasma 5.