Linux Mint 21.2 includes a bit of feature creep from the GNOME world

The latest blog post from the Linux Mint project announces new features coming in 21.2 – and some of them are surprisingly big changes for a point release. The post reveals multiple new features due in the June release. One is especially significant for anyone using the Xfce flavor of Mint 21, if a little unexpected: it will …

[DJV]

A worrying move in the wrong direction...

Mint has been the Linux distro I've favoured for desktop over the past few years. I hope all of these Gnome CSD changes are easily reversible for those of us who wish to use our computers the way WE want.

[Martin Gregorie]

Re: A worrying move in the wrong direction...

This week I've seen another Gnome 'improvement' surface: They used Flatpak to push an Evolution update onto my system.

OK, this Evolution version has improved usability and the revised window layout is an improvement, though I could do without the new monochrome grey palette, which looks old fashioned to me. However, my real beef is with their use of Flatpak. This is because I prefer to synchronize software updates and backups *and* to pick when my systems get updated..

My CHOICE is to run a weekly cycle of an rsync backup of the whole online file system onto a portable USB disk immediately before I run a 'dnf' system upgrade (yes, I prefer the XFCE spin of Fedora Linux) on the grounds that, if necessary, I can easily back out a bad update and *know* that the system will be in a known state. Consequently, I object to Gnome's arrogance in unilaterally using Flatpak to push updates onto my systems whenever they feel like it, and I do wonder what sort of mess they'd leave if they did the push while my backup is running. Since they obviously know I use Evolution, they could at least have ASKED if I wanted push updates and their convenience rather than mine.

[gregzeng]

Re: A worrying move in the wrong direction...

Another Red Hat (Fedora) enthusiast trying to destroy the Debian-Ubuntu-Mint dominance over the diverse (incompatible) Red Hat package managers. Most third party application developers prefer to offer their compiled products in the Debian format; (Slimjet, etc). The RPM format had many incompatible versions: Mandriva, PCLOS, etc.

Both the many Linux operating systems based on either Ubuntu or Mint have access to the PPA system, offered by some application creators (Grub Customizer, etc).

Besides Red Hat's creation of Flatpak, most Linux operating systems can sometimes use the Ubuntu-creation of Snap, or the less popular version of Appimage. These three compiled packages are "containers" that are insensitive to the final settings of the end-user, regarding display theme, and certain other settings.

Most Linux operating systems, including the commentators preferred Inner Red Hat family, have the about to regularly, skillfully and slowly create ready to run complex code, from raw source code. Some Linux systems also offer ways to install compressed code in other unusual Linux formats.

Whichever later versions of applications become available, it is not necessary for the end-user to run the latest version of the application. Super-Users should know what they are doing. The normal end-user should not be allowed to change away from the older versions of them operating system, or the existing applications. All operating systems have their many ways of backing up from new settings. The commentator seems only to know the one way.

[yetanotheraoc]

Re: A worrying move in the wrong direction...

Puzzling. Written by ChatGPT?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Rsync, underrated, such a useful tool, once you learn the syntax.

Like learning to touch type, learning the syntax of the rsync command line should really be part of the education curriculum, because it applies across operating systems as one of the best ways of relocating large amounts of data safely to a backup device. Learn the syntax once to muscle memory, and it's an extremely useful tool , for life.

[bombastic bob]

Re: A worrying move in the wrong direction...

from the article: "we humbly suggest that another such replacement is in order."

Forking from upstream 'prior to latest gnome' would be a good start.

[/me absolutely DESPISES 'Adwaita', went out of my way to get it out of firefox, documented the process]

[DoContra]

CSD isn't the root of that UI evil...

... but it is the enabler. All CSD does is put the responsibility of drawing window decorations on the client (the software you want to run) instead of the server (window manager), as generally done in X based GUIs. And the anti-Wayland brigade will be pleased to know that CSD in most *NIXes """is Wayland's fault""" (something something something easier to implement[1]). But yes, I agree with this Vulture's assessment that the old-fashioned GUIs look better than what GNOME is currently peddling, while emitting no opinion on usability/learnability

( gentle reminder that Windows and macOS only ever had/have CSD 0:) )

[1]: KDE had (has?) plans for server-side decorations in Wayland, but since I've yet to run a Wayland app via the network I can't say what's going on there (have used XWayland and SSH X forwarding and xpra with no issues whatsoever).

[gregzeng]

Re: CSD isn't the root of that UI evil...

Thank you for this "clarification". If I dare to return to being another Wikipedia editor again, it might be worthwhile trying to update the current Wikipedia confusion on CSD, SSD, Windows Managers and Desktop Environments. The boundaries between all these terms seem unclear and frail.

Then we have the continuing changes on GTK and QT, Wayland and the older X-displays. The Chromium based applications seem to offer both or either of the CSD, SSD possibilities, depending on whether the underlying operating system is one of the NIX systems, or not, according to Wikipedia.

Gnome (3), pioneered by the innovating side of Red Hat (Fedoral, offers the raw and pure version of GNOME. Ubuntu and there many other versions of Linux prefer to modify this advanced, fast evolving version of GNOME, to better conform to the traditional desktop, GUI environment first created by Xerox. These many versions of this raw Fedora version of GNOME need to also be sensitive or insensitive to the end-user's chosen system of display hardware and software.

Many end-users need to have complex software, firmware and hardware environments, far beyond the stands of the originators of the operating system. Very large or small screen displays, often simultaneously. Various input devices, including touch screens, of different refresh rates, and user settings. The eye candy settings for the end-user needs less or more "white space", depending on the final viewer display.

All computer operating systems will need to try to handle the many complexities of the rapidly expanding and changing end-users. Then the hardware suppliers (Nvidia, Intel, AMD, Samsung, etc) innovate further, disturbing all the many dependent software codes, once again.

[Rich 2]

GNOME

I’ve not used Gnome for at least 10 years. And to be fair, I thought it was overkill then, but that’s not relevant here

But I am intrigued that almost every story that is written about it seems to be about yet another tweak or outright redesign that NOBODY likes, and the thing seems to get more and more bloated by the week. Am I correct in thinking the Gnome people just don’t care? And why is it (apparently) still so popular when it’s (apparently) utter shite

[gilphilbert]

Re: GNOME

This is perhaps because the people who don't like the changes complain, while the people who are either indifferent or like the changes tend to be quiet in their happiness.

I've used Gnome since "the early days" and transitioned through the change to Gnome 3. Was it smooth? Absolutely not. The first versions were pretty rough but I stuck with it and these days I'm very happy. I have tried the alternatives, but I just enjoy Gnome more - I find it easy to navigate (I'm mostly keyboard driven, for reference) and nice to look at - even though I don't use any user themes.

The Gnome team obviously have a design goal they're heading towards but it's a lot of work and they're taking an iterative approach to get there. Some changes force user behavior changes and, let's be honest, people don't like to change (I read the words "that's not how *I* want to do it very regularly). You can bet that the Gnome team works with users when they make these changes, they just can't work with everyone!

[Someone Else]

Re: GNOME

But I am intrigued that almost every story that is written about it seems to be about yet another tweak or outright redesign that NOBODY likes, and the thing seems to get more and more bloated by the week.

Is GNOME where old,¹ burnt-out Micros~1 GUI-fiddlers go to die?

_{¹Well, older, anyway; it's not likely that any of Micros~1 GUI-fidlers are really that old...}

[gregzeng]

Re: GNOME

The main title of this article was about the traditional Desktop Environment, XFCE. This traditional environment was timely, from there old days, when Gnome 2 existed. Many current Linux operating systems use this XFCE foundation as their default desktop environment.

Mint offers other Desktop Environments: MATE and Cinnamon. Both are reactions to the agreed upon disappearance of the old Gnome (2). Both are reactions against the unusual settings, away from the Xerox WIMP design, of GNOME (3).

The older tradition of XFCE forces the Super-Users permission, everytime, of the deletion of files from the operating system, view the Thunder file manager. This explains why my preference is for the plain and simple MATE desktop environment, or the eye candy of the Cinnamon environment. These other two versions of Mint should the very limited prison of the Thunar file manager, which one's the XFCE based environments.

[fidodogbreath]

Re: GNOME

I'm not a partisan with deeply-held religious views about why one desktop is better than another.

With that said -- I prefer xfce, and if I wanted Gnome I would install a distro & flavor that features it.

[bombastic bob]

Re: GNOME

Am I correct in thinking the Gnome people just don’t care?

I suspect they are either a) paid NOT to care, or b) exist in the same 'bubble world' as Win-10-nic TIFKAM etc.

Gnome, like Micros~1, seeking to "migrate US" to THEIR way, instead of 'customer service'

"One Adwaita to rule them all"

[RegGuy1]

Re: GNOME

"One Adwaita to rule them all"

Careful: Refuse firm Lord of the Bins ordered to change its name by Tolkien franchise.

[cornetman]

One of the things I hated about trying a Mac for a few months at work was that it seems to me that despite all of the luvvies claims that OS/X (at the time) was a consistent and well designed interface, every application that I ran (even the included ones) seemed to be all over the place, with no consistent idea of layout or UI idea.

I run Linux Mint with MATE here at work these days and to my dismay I have started to see these hamburger-based applications sneaking in. It's just so disappointing to witness the divergence from a coherent UI design on these popular platforms.

[Liam Proven]

[Author here]

> no consistent idea of layout or UI

OS X _used_ to be pretty consistent. It was a bit OTT from version 10.0 to 10.2, but then the style started settling down a bit. For most purposes 10.6 was the peak, and since then, it's been pretty steadily degenerating into chaos.

IMHO, and this one is a little more controversial, iOS also reached its peak at version 6 and it's been getting mostly worse since... but that's especially annoying as some important new features appeared between versions 7 -- 9.

As of v16 it's finally got desktop widgets and an automatic categorisation system for app icons, which is handy, but unfortunately that version is also cluttered with irritating bloat.

Both are great shames.

[Terry 6]

iOS

I'm new to using an iPhone ( got disillusioned with OnePlus btw because of the changes that started to appear, which removed the nice features that made 1+ special)

And I get an impression that iOS is pretty much all over the place.

Where's the bin icon> Oh it's in the botom right. No it isn't now it's the top right, And sometimes a control won't even be there at all. It might have an x or a cancel button or just nothing with no way to exit.

[Zippy´s Sausage Factory]

I totally agree about iOS. The upgrade from 6 to 7 was jarring for me not just in terms of the fact that, compared to 6, iOS 7 (and every version since) has been on the ugly pills, but also because it seemed the UI rulebook was just thrown out and it was now a free for all.

iOS 6 was a better time, and we'll never see its like again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Have I Mentioned -- "Let A Hundred Flowers Bloom", Mao Tse Tung

OFF TOPIC

There really is such a thing as "Too Much Choice".......just take a look at: https://distrowatch.com/

MORE OFF TOPIC

That said, one commentard here said: "Am I correct in thinking the Gnome people just don’t care?".....

Yup.....they don't care! Just take a look at GTK4. Absolutely NO backward compatibility with GTK3......NONE at all.....................

So.......all you GTK3 folk.............suck it up........you need to REWRITE your GTK3 stuff......................

No wonder the Glade team refuse to move off GTK3...........Yup.....the GNOME folk don't give a f**k!!!

THE END

[Terry 6]

Re: Have I Mentioned -- "Let A Hundred Flowers Bloom", Mao Tse Tung

Or maybe it's not that they don't care, but that they don't care about end users.

It's the FOSS plague (here come the down votes). Software projects written because they interest the developers, or simply in the way the developers find pleasing in some way. The ordinary user isn't so much a consideration because were not the motivation to write the thing in the first place. And any suggestion that an approach or feature may not be the best way forward is ignored, or worse, users with helpful suggestions are told if they don't like the way that it is they can fork it; except most of us users can't. maybe because we're not coders, or because starting to understand that programme from the outside is beyond us, or we don't have the skills for something as complex as that and so forth.

[Greybearded old scrote]

Re: Have I Mentioned -- "Let A Hundred Flowers Bloom", Mao Tse Tung

Hardly just FOSS. Did you hear the screaming over every version of Windows after 7?

[captain veg]

screaming over every version of Windows after 7?

I started using Windows in anger at 3.1.

It was OK. Not brilliant, but it got stuff done. What was insufferable was the GPF, an error in a single application program, or system component, which stiffed the entire computer.

Windows 95 was slightly better, but certainly not immune. It brought some UI changes which were mostly just changes, and in some cases improvements.

Windows NT4 did away with GPFs taking down the whole system, and had the Windows 95 shell. Quite good. Needed a lot of RAM, for the time. Didn't know anything about USB.

Windows 2000 knew about USB. Which is useful.

Windows XP started *much* quicker. It had a stupid new Fischer-Price UI, but you could turn it off. Really good, by the standard of these things.

Windows Vista is utterly unknown. No one used it, it was that bad.

Windows 7 was better than Vista. Damned by faint praise. The last version of Windows with a sane user interface, which counts for something.

Windows 8 was... the less said the better.

Windows 8.1 was a little bit less bad.

Window 10 was just terrible. There is no good reason for running it other than the fact that Windows 7 is out of support.

Windows 11 is even more terrible. There is no good reason for running it other than the fact that Windows 7 is out of support, and Windows 10 will soon be.

-A.

[Slipoch]

Re: screaming over every version of Windows after 7?

the less said about ME the better....

8.1 had faster boot time than 7 and 10 had a faster boot time than 8.1, about the only real world improvement.

[Terry 6]

Re: screaming over every version of Windows after 7?

I have to agree. XP (and even later 98) provided a good working tool that allowed me to do what I needed to do, in a comfortable and unobtrusive way. (Also much preferred it to MacOs, which I found required just too much of the attention I'd rather give to the work in hand. )

But from Vista onwards Windows just didn't seem to care about users' actual use. As if they were trying to make it the core, rather than the cover on what we do with an OS.

7 was reasonable, but almost seemed like a retreat back to XP. Ditto 10 after the debacle of 8

Something must have changed in Microsoft management between XP and Vista. People queued to get 98. The were queuing to complain about 8.

[Adair]

Re: Have I Mentioned -- "Let A Hundred Flowers Bloom", Mao Tse Tung

There's a simple solution: set up a distro that has as it's primary aim consistency of UI.

If that is too hard then find something that at least nods in that direction, and, failing that, learn to live in an environment that explicitly allows (even philosophically encourages) people to go off in pretty much whatever direction they please, regardless of the wailing and hand-wringing of others.

I mean, we're not paying for most/any of this stuff, except with our time, so ultimately we freeloaders can just be thankful we are allowed to come along for the ride and use what we can.

Likewise corporate entities depending on FLOSS, if they really don't like what is on offer they can always actually pay to make changes that suit them better, just so long as they are willing to share on the same basis that they use (or just keep their mods and new stuff in-house).

It's this irritating thing called 'freedom'.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Have I Mentioned -- "Let A Hundred Flowers Bloom", Mao Tse Tung

"There's a simple solution: set up a distro that has as it's primary aim consistency of UI."

IBM tried that with AIX. SMIT anybody?

[ovation1357]

Don't blame MINT

I've been angrily raving about this problem for a couple of years now after getting a big shock when I upgraded to Ubuntu MATE 20.04 - suddenly there were hideous 'Hamburger' menus and other nasty touch-centric obscenities in my desktop UI.

When I read that Xfce was going to switch to this CSD madness I said to myself back then that the users running LTS distros are going to be furious when they upgrade and discover this horror. I believe that time is now arriving :-(

It turns out that this is mainly due to a couple of very arrogant ideologists from the GTK project who have decided for the rest of us that title bars are a waste of pixels and classic application menus the wrong way to do it.... Therefore rather than enabling any kind of user choice, they've deprecated and removed support for 'classic' UI elements and gone round, fairly successfully, pressuring the maintainers of GTK-based applications to remove support for menus and title bars and replace them with hamburgers, embedded titlebar buttons and 'pop-overs'.

This means that regardless of which desktop or distribution you use, even if you use KDE, any application based on GTK3 or above is likely to have all this CSD shit and there's basically nothing anyone can do about it!

So far as I know all the current mainstream web browsers for Linux are using GTK so even though I'm very grateful that the Firefox Devs still implement their own classic menus, I'm stuck with crappy invisible scroll bars and weird mobile-style menus with their own back/forward navigation buttons rather than following mouse focus.

I've been exploring and discussing options to deal with this but my conclusion is that the only way to reverse this would have to firstly involve either persuading GTK to add back support for classic features (unlikely) or to fork/replace GTK but then you'd have convince all application maintainers to re-implement all the stuff that they spent time removing.

I'm seriously pissed off about this and have been unable to find any escape from having my stable and productive desktop being completely shat on except for opting to run outdated OS and applications.

GNOME / GTK, along with its obsession with Weyland can do whatever the hell it wants to with it's desktop user interface but not at the cost of breaking everyone else's!

[LinuxDan2015]

Re: Don't blame MINT

Dammit! and AMEN!!

[Nameless Dread]

Bring back the good ol' days

Just gone from LM19.3 to LM20.3, prompted (driven?) by warnings of LM19's imminent EOL.

IMO, general appearance of LM20 is 'Teletubbies' compared with LM19 crispness, and overall performance has slowed.

Any chance of reverting the appearance ?

Also had to upgrade Virtual Box and now B -Win XP can't see my second hard drive. AND can't update Firefox manually!

Not a happy bunny.

[phuzz]

There are dozens of us!

Reading the above comments makes me feel like I must be in a pretty small minority of people who think that being able to adapt to different GUIs is a useful skill.

I'm guessing no one else tries out new OSs/GUIs for fun? I regularly jump between Windows, Mint Mate and Mint XFCE for work, and don't find any of them any more difficult to use than the others. Being adaptable is something I get paid money for.

[Greybearded old scrote]

Re: There are dozens of us!

Playing with different systems is quite a fun hobby. Being forced to adapt when you need to Get Stuff Done is impolite at best.

[ovation1357]

Re: There are dozens of us!

If you're lucky enough that you can navigate your way around a load of different GUIs without it bothering you then that's great and I'm possibly even a bit jealous!

I can't! I'm very particular about my desktop and get very frustrated on systems which don't work _my_ way.

My standpoint is very much one of use choice. Linux has been a very attractive choice for people who want full control of their computer and the choice to have it look and feel exactly as they want it to.

Take the MATE desktop for example - it actually comes with a utility which allows you to instantly switch your desktop to look and behave like all the current proprietary OSes as well a few popular Linux environments. Select "Redmond" and you've got a taskbar with a "start" menu, choose "Cupertino" and the task bar is gone, replaced with a mac-style dock and top menu bar. If you want something unique that's fine too because you have full control of the desktop layout, keyboard mappings, even the positioning, function and ordering of titlebar buttons.

HOWEVER.... This particular change from GTK is implemented in such a way that it affects all desktop environments and not just the GTK based ones but also the Qt based ones such as KDE and it offers no options whatsoever to configure how it looks or behaves.

So regardless of your choices, if you run a GTK based application such as Chrome or Firefox then it's going to look like it's running on the GNOME desktop (and behave like you're on a mobile touchscreen device) whether you like it or not!

This is a total abuse by the GNOME project of the power it holds through the wide adoption of GTK. It's possible that they were just narrow-minded and simply didn't think about the massive impact their changes would have outside their own environment but I can't help thinking this is very deliberate.

This is not okay and people are absolutely justified in expressing their dismay and anger.

[cornetman]

Re: There are dozens of us!

> I'm guessing no one else tries out new OSs/GUIs for fun?

Honestly, I'm happy to try out different things from time to time. What really exercises me though is lack of UI consistent on the platform that I use. It just really grates.

[Greybearded old scrote]

geeqie++

I've been using it for many years, and can wholeheartedly recommend it.

It seems a little sluggish compared to a few versions ago, but not compared to almost anything else I've seen. I've very rarely found cause to swear at it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck GNOME

we use Ubuntu *server*. OG flavour. No GUI.

Updated to 20.04 (yes we stay one step behind) and only by chance - a console window in the VM hypervisor - realised that for reasons no one could explain, erlang (yes, look it up) now has GNOME dependencies. So an upgrade installs the whole GNOME shooting match. Desktop, graphical login. You name it.

I ask - again - WTF a server version of a library needs this GNOME shite.

And I run Mint at home.

[keithpeter]

Re: Fuck GNOME

Don't assume that I know what I'm on about.

Ubuntu is based off Debian at some point in the life cycle

Debian packagers are well known for enabling many optional dependencies when they package.

Perhaps worth investigating recompiling erlang from source without the Gnome dependency?

Icon: DYOR

[nautica]

A wee bit of context, for your consideration---

...but otherwise a very good article. Correction---an outstanding article.

From the article...

"...“Mint, however, is progressively diverging further from its Ubuntu roots..."

Not to put too fine a point on this, but Mint succeeded all those years, and in grandiose fashion, precisely and absolutely because Clement Lefevbre started out by diverging from its Ubuntu roots. His whole intent, rationale, strategy, and stated reason for creating Mint Linux, was to make Ubuntu easier to use.

It (Mint) stayed at the very top of DistroWatch's list (and the lists of a great number of reviewers) for many years, up through Mint 17.3, and was based on Ubuntu 14.04.

The slide started, and MX-Linux took over when (and be very clear about this point), Clement Lefebvre DECIDED TO GET CLOSER TO Ubuntu's roots, and adopted Ubuntu 16.04 as his base, almost completely and wholeheartedly, without making very many changes in Ubuntu at all; totally at odds with his strategy of all those halcyon years which had Mint Linux as THE distro for the masses.

The one hallmark of Mint up to this point (Mint 17.3) was that M. Lefebvre worked very hard at making Linux Mint be "...the Ubuntu which works as it should..."

Mint has never recovered from Lefebvre's decision which started with Linux Mint 18.

As your article's premise so eloquently states: “...Mint, however, is progressively diverging further from its Ubuntu roots...”.

It cannot be emphasized enough that this is a phenomenon which is localized in time only, and does not apply to the majority of Mint's existence.

------------

As an aside for your consideration:

the very last Linux Mint which was the #1 distro, Mint 17.3, was a 1400 MB download (64-bit, with 32-bit available).

This next version looks like it will come in at somewhere between 2700 MB and 2800 MB. No 32-bit.

And, for reference, most people consider Linux Mint 13, "Maya", to be "...one of the tightest, slickest Linux distros of all times"... Size? 950 MB.

Just thought you'd like to know...

It is respectfully suggested that if Mint is, as you put it, “...progressively diverging further from its Ubuntu roots...”, that you add context by stating that Mint is "... progressively diverging further from its Ubuntu roots, which roots were established when Mint wholeheartedly adopted Ubuntu with the introduction of Linux Mint 18.

[robinsonb5]

Re: A wee bit of context, for your consideration---

> And, for reference, most people consider Linux Mint 13, "Maya", to be "...one of the tightest, slickest Linux distros of all times"

I'll second that - when a forced Firefox upgrade left me with little choice to upgrade from Mint 13 (Mate) a couple of years ago I went to Mint 20 and was shocked by just how many things didn't work properly any more.

As for CSD - what I object to most is that I can't send the window to the back by middle-clicking the titlebar.

The sad truth is that the generation raised on smartphones now considers the mouse to be an archaic input device, so mouse-oriented interfaces will take a back seat to touch-oriented interfaces even when the latter makes no sense (looking at you GEdit and GtkWave!).

[lamp]

Let's not be too critical

There are so many complaints from people about software that has been created by hard working volunteers. I for one am thankful for their contributions, they're doing a fantastic job job.

[Terry 6]

Re: Let's not be too critical

I agree,of course. I benefit, as we all do, from the likes of LibreOffice and 'nux versions that we use.

But, and it's a major but, if development alienates the vast majority of potential users it means that the projects will not gain traction. Possibly that doesn't bother the devs, even if they're piously forecasting the year of Linux...etc. but the risk is that the projects fade into obscurity, or worse only survive as part of a commercial fork under the control of Google or Apple etc.

[RegGuy1]

Bluetooth...

From the article: Mint recently dropped GNOME's Bluetooth stack and replaced it with BlueMan.

Thanks for this. I wondered why bluetooth had become shit but had no idea. Mind you, serves me right for thinking an upgrade of Mint was a good thing. I'll not be doing that again. I hate gedit. Which fucking numptie thought it was a good idea to remove the menu? Cunt. For years, well decades to be accurate, I have used ALT-F-S to save a file. I will not change my behaviour that has been trouble-free for donkey's years just because some little shit thinks it will improve my life. It didn't. Fuck off.