Debian's Cinnamon desktop maintainer quits because he thinks KDE is better now
- Reference: 1623783668
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/06/15/debian_cinnamon_maintainer_quits/
- Source link:
The origins of the Cinnamon desktop go back to 2011 and the release of the controversial GNOME 3 desktop, which introduced radical changes. Some Linux users preferred the desktop metaphor offered by GNOME 2.x, including the Linux Mint team. The MATE desktop was a fork of GNOME 2, while the Linux Mint folk made Cinnamon, a fork of GNOME 3 designed to retain the design of GNOME 2, using the Mint Gnome Shell Extensions (MGSE). Cinnamon later became a full fork of GNOME 3.
Cinnamon remains the default desktop for Linux Mint (which also offers MATE and Xfce editions), but is also available for other distributions including Debian. Mint itself is based on Ubuntu, though there is also a Linux Mint Debian edition (LMDE).
[1]
Preining caused some consternation last week when he [2]stated : "Since my switch to KDE/Plasma, I haven't used Cinnamon in months." Preining said that he left GNOME 3 because of its "complete lack of usability for pro-users" and adopted Cinnamon because of what he felt was the bloat "during the bad days of KDE 3 and 4". However, he is a recent convert, calling it "more lightweight, faster, responsive, integrated, customizable" than earlier versions.
[3]Linux Mint emits fix for memory-gobbling Cinnamon – and future version may insist on some updates
[4]Debian 'Bullseye' enters final phase before release as team debates whether it will be last to work on i386 architecture
[5]Linux Mint sticks by Snap decision – meaning store is still disabled by default in 20.1
[6]DPL: Debian project has plenty of money but not enough developers
The switch made him unenthusiastic about continuing to maintain Cinnamon for Debian. He has completed work packaging Cinnamon 4 for Debian Bullseye (the next version, currently in testing), but acknowledged that Cinnamon 5 is already available and that he "will most probably NOT be packaging Cinnamon 5, nor do any real packaging work of Cinnamon for Debian in the future."
Although the default desktop for Debian is GNOME (version 3.38 in the case of Bullseye since GNOME 40 was released too late to be included), the threatened loss of the Cinnamon option did not please users. Fortunately for them, Joshua Peisach has stepped up to replace him, adding in the [7]statement on the Debian list that he hoped to be joined by another volunteer as "just hopping up to be the one man is difficult."
[8]
LMDE was not directly affected since the Mint team packages Cinnamon for this edition, but nevertheless the news was welcomed by its users with one [9]stating that "LMDE users were concerned."
By way of contrast, a comment to Preining's post [10]said : "Thank you. We need fewer desktops." While diversity is a good thing, it also dilutes resources, arguably making it harder for Linux to compete with commercial products. Even a decade later, there remain rumblings of dissatisfaction with the direction of GNOME, while for some KDE is tainted by association with the commercial Qt company and the dual-licensing of the Qt component libraries. There is also value in offering a choice between full-featured desktops like GNOME and KDE, versus lightweight takes like [11]Xfce .
[12]
There is little sign of consolidation in the free software desktop world, with newcomers like the GNOME-based [13]COSMIC gaining interest as well as the more experimental retro-minimalist [14]helloSystem . ®
Get our [15]Tech Resources
[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YMki-kQNtORAtxRBaCw4-gAAAEw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://www.preining.info/blog/2021/06/future-of-cinnamon-in-debian/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/02/linux_mint_fix_for_memorygobbling/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/14/debian_bullseye/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/11/linux_mint_201/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2020/09/10/debian_project_address/
[7] https://lists.debian.org/debian-cinnamon/2021/06/msg00003.html
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YMki-kQNtORAtxRBaCw4-gAAAEw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?p=2026731#p2026731
[10] https://www.preining.info/blog/2021/06/future-of-cinnamon-in-debian/#comment-121837
[11] https://xfce.org/
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YMki-kQNtORAtxRBaCw4-gAAAEw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/14/system_76_introduces_cosmic_desktop/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/12/freebsd_that_looks_like_macos/
[15] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
> Maintaining ancient KDE 3.5 era applications is very difficult compared to old Gtk2 and even Gtk 1 applications.
Not really. The only thing you have to do is install LSB Desktop and you get Qt 3.5 with its own moc.
Linux Standard Base? Not only is Qt not part of that since Jessie, lsb-desktop only provides Qt4.
https://packages.debian.org/jessie/lsb-desktop
Qt 3 was officially removed from lsb in 2015 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Standard_Base)
So unfortunately, no. Not a solution for software lifespan. Especially since LSB is all but abandoned by most Linux platforms. It also doesn't really help with BSD and other platforms.
He’s right. It is!
(Legs it as the Gnomeites and Cinnamonites start lobbing brickbats!)
In all seriousness, the wonderful thing about Linux is that we have the choice. The price we pay for that choice is a disjointed user experience where user interface elements from one program don’t match up with those from another.
Now I know that Debian also packages Cinnamon
But wouldn't someone who wanted Cinnamon choose Mint in the first place?
And I like Preining's reply to the "thank you. We need fewer desktops" post: "In some sense I agree with you, so let us abolish Gnome3 as it has been a misconception right from the beginning! Maybe we can tunnel the energy of the developers to Cinnamon and a decent DE environment based on Gtk?"
Re: Now I know that Debian also packages Cinnamon
I have never had a problem with options, not a fanbois.
I get more riled when they change the cli interface than when they change a gui.
KDE
The early 201X's were an interesting time. Ubuntu had just landed and was winning new Linux users by the tens of thousands with its easy and intuitive desktop. Then things like GNOME 3 and Unity started landing, things that tried to turn every computer into a tablet with a keyboard.
KDE had some bad-ish times too, but it's still been my daily driver because it looks and acts like a desktop. It is optimized for devices with an upright screen, and a physical keyboard and mouse. Apple and Microsoft would do well to emulate this.
Well it is a thank you for your work and efforts to Norbert Preining from me, good luck with your future activities.
Well done to Joshua Peisach ([and others] for taking up the reins.
Mate is great
Not sure when I first switched to Gnome 2, though I was using Afterstep for many years in the late 90s and early 00s (on Debian), perhaps I jumped to Gnome 2 from that mostly on Ubuntu maybe starting mid 00s. Then Ubuntu and the Gnome team separately both taking similar drugs decided on radical changes. Fortunately there was enough people to start MATE and Mint(not sure when Mint's first version was). I jumped ship from Ubuntu about a year after 10.04 LTS went end of life to Mate 17, and now on Mate 20(installed fresh last year).
Really nice to have a stable user interface for about the last 15 years now. Though I may only have ~5ish years left one of my key bits of software I use with Mate is called brightside for edge flipping on virtual desktops(never been multi monitor, always been virtual desktops my regular laptop uses 16). brightside apparently isn't maintained anymore, the last version I could find was for Ubuntu 16.04.
After a couple hours of work I was able to build it cleanly on Mint 20 (Ubuntu 20) and it works fine, but several of the libraries it uses are past end of life(and I had to hack some stuff into the code/configs to get them to build) and am certainly concerned 5 years down the road when I upgrade again will it even work anymore. Then there's the whole Wayland thing what will that be like, guessing brightside from 2014 using X11 protocol probably won't work too well on that. Been using edge flipping since my days with Afterstep which was/is a master at virtual desktops(WindowMaker too I'm sure I used Afterstep at the time to be different I guess, later used LiteStep on WinXP for my work system in mid 00s). Mate works fine without brightside but I switch virtual desktops often times several times a minute so having that functionality is critical. I saw some alternatives before I went down the road of building brightside myself none seemed to compare from what I recall.
Only annoying bit is the marco window manager continuously loses the "mouse over activation" ability(another critical bit for me), started a few years ago was hoping it would be fixed in Mate 20 but it is not. I have a little button on the screen that I press to reset marco(doesn't cause any data loss) and it works again for a random amount of time.
Never was into Cinnamon or Gnome 3, I have had Gnome 3 on my home Debian "server" (only has a GUI to show either calm videos in a loop in VLC or a slideshow) over the years and think it would be too painful to use day to day.
I used KDE back in the 90s for a while I remember building it and QT from source many times, pre 1.0 stuff. Not sure why I stopped using it
Anyways thanks to MATE/Mint folks..going to go donate again now.
Re: Mate is great
I started using Mint w/ MATE for personal systems about 6 years ago. Does everything I need and want, new versions change gently and don't require re-building a mental model or muscle memory, it's stable, and snappy enough on my machines. The one thing I miss from the old DEs is the ability to have different wallpapers on different virtual screens, but I can live without that.
Congrats to the MATE team for delivering a solid and useful piece of software that consistently respects its end users.
Lightweight and easily portable
I like xfce. Not the prettiest toy on the shelf, but it's super responsive on pretty much any hardware.
My personal issue with KDE (and Qt) is lifespan. Maintaining ancient KDE 3.5 era applications is very difficult compared to old Gtk2 and even Gtk 1 applications.
MOC is partially to blame as a non-standard preprocessor. The build systems supporting a specific version of MOC tends to rot. There is also a slight culture with the KDE community to pull everyone up to the latest and greatest and basically ditch anyone who doesn't want to upgrade.
Gnome 3+ is naff, and KDE 4+ is naff. Linux and BSD really is lacking an effective desktop in my opinion. Mix this together with the big unknown that is Wayland and the whole environment is very uninspiring.
FLTK for smaller tools and wxWidgets for larger tools is my recommendation. Skip the mess that is Gtk and Qt, it is just too volatile and unstable in terms of communities and objectives.