Gnome replaces Unity

[Liam Proven]

On 14 October 2017 at 17:22, R Kimber
<richardkimber at politicsresources.net> wrote:
> I understand that in 17.10 Gnome is going to replace Unity.
>
> When Unity was introduced I stuck wiith Gnome and eventually ended up with
> Ubuntu-mate.

Yes, but that was GNOME 2. Maté is a fork of GNOME 2.

> So, my question is: would people advise moving back from Ubuntu-mate to the
> main Gnome-based distribution?

If you didn't like Unity, then no.

>  I'm not sure I see the point of Mate
> post-17.10,

Maté is now its own desktop. It started off as a fork of GNOME 2.

GNOME 3 is a totally different product with a totally different
desktop that is unlike anything else. It is not Windows-like (as are
Maté, Xfce, LXDE, KDE, Enlightenment etc.) nor is it Mac-like (as are
Unity and Elementary).

GNOME 3 also needs hardware 3D acceleration, like Unity and Cinnamon,
but unlike Maté, Xfce & LXDE.)

> but maybe there is some benefit in sticking with it (?)

If you like the desktop. GNOME 3 is totally unlike it. But you might
like it. Try it in a VM or on a spare machine or even dual-booting and
see. Some people do. I do not, myself.

>  Or is
> it all purely cosmetic?

No.

Maté, like GNOME 2 itself and XFCE and LXDE, was based on GNOME 2's
programming toolkit, Gtk2.

Unity, GNOME 3 & Cinnamon use a newer version, Gtk3.

However, it's now been several years and Gtk3 has stabilised.

XFCE 4.12 has switched to it. Maté is still underway but I understand
it's nearly done. LXDE switched to the rival Qt instead.

So soon all the major Gtk desktops will be on Gtk3 -- GNOME 3, Maté,
Xfce & Cinnamon. This means that they can share more components.

Mint, the authors of Cinnamon and sponsors of Maté, have also forked
the GNOME 3 accessories -- file manager, text editor, image & document
viewer, calculator, etc.

The reason is that the GNOME project have removed menu bars, toolbars
and a lot of customisation from these tools in their pursuit of
radical simplicity. (GNOME 3 is somewhat phone-like.)

That means there were 2 forks of the GNOME accessories: Maté forked
the GNOME 2 ones, Cinnamon forked the GNOME 3 ones.

Mint have forked the accessories and put these things back. Now
they're sponsoring an effort to merge the Maté and Cinnamon
accessories into what they call XApps.

This means that the Maté & Cinnamon projects will both have smaller
code-bases to maintain and much more code in common. Hopefully this
means further, quicker progress. Xfce may adopt some of these apps
too.

So while it's a bad time for Unity, my favourite Linux desktop, it's a
good time for Maté, as well as for Xfce and Cinnamon.

Me, I use XFCE at work. I may switch to that, as it does vertical
panels way better than Maté or Cinnamon.

But I am not switching to GNOME. I try it every year or so, and every
time, it gets weirder, less like anything else, with more features
removed. It's also more integrated with systemd and I don't like
systemd much either.

TL;DR.

I would advise you to try it for yourself, but not to switch your main
machine to it until you've decided. From what you've said you have
absolutely no reason to switch and every reason to stay on your chosen
desktop.

-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
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