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Here we go again.Sometime in 2010 I gave up on Mepis distro running KDE 4.whatever and moved to Mint running Gnome 2.whatever. I chose Mint Debian which is a rolling distro running Debian testing. For a year I've been happily going along running the updates as they come in, the odd problem with something a bit more bleeding edge than is comfortable but nothing unmanageable until this week. I ran the latest updates without trawling through them for detail and I ended up with Gnome 3.0. This desktop with the panels across the top and with none of my desktop icons visible. When I pressed the right mouse button on the desktop, no menus. Ditto for the middle and left. Likewise, I couldn't make sense of the top panel management. I assume that something went wrong with the installation. I installed Xfce and rebooted but because I bypass the initial log-in Gnome 3 appeared again. So I set start-up log-in and rebooted which took me to the command line. I logged in as me and still got the command line. I tried starting Gnome with service and all that rubbish, got nowhere so I did what any sensible person would do and re-installed. I put on Mint Debian Xfce and that is what is now running. My other desktop computer is still running Mint Debian Gnome 2.whatever. This brings up 2 points
1. This type of thing is why people stick with Microsoft, or move to Apple if they can afford it. With Apple you get what you pay for. Rock solid, useable but you don't mess with it. With Windows you can play with it to some extent but you know what you will get. It may not be rock solid but, hey, what's a BSOD now and then between friends. With Linux you work your socks off to get things exactly as you want them and then, lo and behold, the ceiling caves in and you are left staring at Unity. Only idiots like me who are a bit masochistic will put up with this and this is why Linux will never be king of the desktops. Thousands of People are still running XP, and Win 95 for all I know, and are very happy to do so because they do what is familiar.
2. If you are the masochistic type (most of the people on this LUG) what the hell do you run? There are some opinions on Slashdot this week, see:
http://linux.slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&type=story&sid=11/11/11/1752226#commentlistingI looked at Unity last week and thought 'Why would you take up all that lovely desktop space with links to Applications (That is Applications, not Apps)'. To the day I retired my physical desktop was a repository for my current work in progress with anything not being worked on moving to the back of the desk until it fell in the waste basket or the filing system. I use my computer desktop in exactly the same way but KDE, Unity and Gnome now don't want me to work this way. Xfce and LMDE will but are they what I need in other areas. I will now have to spend time yet again testing the options. OK, OK, I know I enjoy it but most other people don't and that is why Linux desktop will always struggle. Believe it or not, there are people out there who want the decisions made for them.
As I said, here we go again. George -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq