Yes Houston we have a problem...kinda

Vermillion

Supreme [H]ardness
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Apr 5, 2007
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So after looking that the issue with the Cinnamon DE for Snowdog yesterday I started poking around other "big" distros just to see and play with them a bit since I had the laptop available to me while at work.

I was generally interested to see if the issue with Cinnamon was a more common issue than not. So I figured what the hell. I have the ability to do it.

So what I did was grab a few from the top 15 in the page hit list on distrowatch. I ignored the "normal" ones like Debian/Fedora/openSUSE/CentOS etc. I also skipped Ubuntu (and it's DE variations) itself with the exception of Kubuntu since I was comparing that to KDE Neon yesterday for the other thread yesterday.

Here's what I've loaded so far:

Mint Cinnamon
Mint MATE
KDE Neon
Kubuntu
elementary
Antergos

Deepin was left off because it wanted 2 days to download.
Zorin and Manjaro unfortunately were left off because SourceForge is blocked here at the office for some stupid reason. I'll grab those tonight at home and possibly give those a shot tomorrow.

And of course I use heavily Arch itself and Solus.

Look at that list though. Ubuntu is the common thing. Almost every one of them is a fork of Ubuntu which is a fork of Debian. So most are a fork of a fork. All with their own default DEs. Some of those DEs are a horrible experience.

I'm not saying creating another distro is a bad thing. It's not. But if you create a distro make it worthwhile. Here's what I've found with each distro so far. I'm also fully aware that I'm giving most of these distros just a small time for actual use but I used Xubuntu for a long time before I moved to Arch. So I know Ubuntu pretty well which means most of what I'm dealing with right now is nothing but different DEs and the user interface. So I don't need a whole lot of time to get a feel for the distro.

Mint Cinnamon - Cinnamon with Muffin is garbage. Period. Their fork of Mutter call Muffin is horrible. Why fork Mutter? Why!? And on top of it you can't change the compositor. Not OK. I really don't understand how this version of Mint can be so popular with the glaring DE issues. It would drive me bat-shit crazy.

Mint MATE - quite nice once you change to compton or compiz for compositing. However, what does Mint MATE bring to the table compared to Ubuntu MATE? That would be not a damn thing really outside of Mint being only LTS based. So this one really does fall under...why does this exist?

KDE Neon - Actually quite nice. Plasma 5.10 is fast, fluid and very nice looking. It's Ubuntu with rolling releases of KDE. I actually like this one after using it. KDE isn't my thing but if I had use a KDE based system Neon would have some consideration. Oh who am I kidding...I'd just use Arch and KDE. :p

Kubuntu - It's Plasma 5.9.3. It's fast and fluid. It's Ubuntu running KDE. Not much different than KDE Neon other than being a slightly older version of Plasma.

elementary - I had high hopes for this one as a lot of people like it. It's been nothing but a pain in the ass. The touchpad doesn't work right. Every other Ubuntu based distro works just fine but this one is jerky and the cursor jumps all over the screen especially when two finger scrolling. They broke Ubuntu. I don't even know how you do that. Pantheon isn't a bad DE. It's nice looking and it's fluid. I hate it though as I hate the macOS look. I also have to ask did they really have to fork Mutter and chunks of the Gnome stack? Who knows but at least theirs works and is still nice and smooth unlike Cinnamon.

Antergos - Arch for the newbie user. The installer is wonderful. The options? So much better than any other installer out there. I chose MATE at my DE during the install. Then they give you options for your browser choice (Chromium or Firefox). They give you the option for installing UFW and GUFW comes with that. It's a very nice experience. It's Arch for a beginner. The only issue I found is that there is no good compositor included by default. So while I didn't have any tearing it was a little jerky until I install Compton. It's also interesting to see the difference between MATE here and MATE on Mint. Just little things like the desktop-settings piece isn't in Antergos. Meaning that nice chunk of code probably didn't make it back up the mainline into MATE itself. I haven't verified that though. Overall Antergos is a fork of a distro that truly aims at a target and hits the mark. Antergos wanted to make installing Arch easy in order to bring it to the masses. They did it wonderfully.

Arch - It's Arch. It's whatever you want it to be. Yes, it requires more work and requires the user to actually learn something for a change but the sky is the limit and you can change DEs all you want. :)

Solus - A distro built from the ground up and not just another Ubuntu derivative. If I can't have Arch I'll take Solus. Fast, fluid, and an original DE (Budgie) to top it off. Best part about Budgie is that is built on the Gnome stack (just like Pantheon) but they didn't fork anything. So it just friggin works and works really well. LTS kernel as well and with the recent edition of clr-boot-manager they're looking into also giving users the option to install supported mainstream kernels. Solus is doing things differently. They're making themselves appeal to the masses because they aren't just another Ubuntu fork.

Again I'm not trying to make it sound like more distros are a bad thing. I guess I'm just tired of seeing more and more forks of Ubuntu with a forked DE with a few changes from the original and a theme. It's starting to look at the Android custom ROM section of a Nexus device on XDA. Any day now I'm expecting to see a thread somewhere called "My t0t4lly b1ch1n L1nux d1str0". It'll be Ubuntu with XFCE, Compton and some new theme that looks like Windows.

Seriously though the forking needs to stop unless it really needs to be done. A lot of it feels like stuff is being forked just to fork it. Forks like that mean improvements probably don't go but up the mainline. That's not good. You also have the forks that totally fuck up the original. *cough* *muffin* *cough* Pantheon forked Mutter but at least that one still works. It's still a smooth and fluid interface.

So there you have it. Flame away! :D
 
So after looking that the issue with the Cinnamon DE for Snowdog yesterday I started poking around other "big" distros just to see and play with them a bit since I had the laptop available to me while at work.

I was generally interested to see if the issue with Cinnamon was a more common issue than not. So I figured what the hell. I have the ability to do it.

So what I did was grab a few from the top 15 in the page hit list on distrowatch. I ignored the "normal" ones like Debian/Fedora/openSUSE/CentOS etc. I also skipped Ubuntu (and it's DE variations) itself with the exception of Kubuntu since I was comparing that to KDE Neon yesterday for the other thread yesterday.

Here's what I've loaded so far:

Mint Cinnamon
Mint MATE
KDE Neon
Kubuntu
elementary
Antergos

Deepin was left off because it wanted 2 days to download.
Zorin and Manjaro unfortunately were left off because SourceForge is blocked here at the office for some stupid reason. I'll grab those tonight at home and possibly give those a shot tomorrow.

And of course I use heavily Arch itself and Solus.

Look at that list though. Ubuntu is the common thing. Almost every one of them is a fork of Ubuntu which is a fork of Debian. So most are a fork of a fork. All with their own default DEs. Some of those DEs are a horrible experience.

I'm not saying creating another distro is a bad thing. It's not. But if you create a distro make it worthwhile. Here's what I've found with each distro so far. I'm also fully aware that I'm giving most of these distros just a small time for actual use but I used Xubuntu for a long time before I moved to Arch. So I know Ubuntu pretty well which means most of what I'm dealing with right now is nothing but different DEs and the user interface. So I don't need a whole lot of time to get a feel for the distro.

Mint Cinnamon - Cinnamon with Muffin is garbage. Period. Their fork of Mutter call Muffin is horrible. Why fork Mutter? Why!? And on top of it you can't change the compositor. Not OK. I really don't understand how this version of Mint can be so popular with the glaring DE issues. It would drive me bat-shit crazy.

Mint MATE - quite nice once you change to compton or compiz for compositing. However, what does Mint MATE bring to the table compared to Ubuntu MATE? That would be not a damn thing really outside of Mint being only LTS based. So this one really does fall under...why does this exist?

KDE Neon - Actually quite nice. Plasma 5.10 is fast, fluid and very nice looking. It's Ubuntu with rolling releases of KDE. I actually like this one after using it. KDE isn't my thing but if I had use a KDE based system Neon would have some consideration. Oh who am I kidding...I'd just use Arch and KDE. :p

Kubuntu - It's Plasma 5.9.3. It's fast and fluid. It's Ubuntu running KDE. Not much different than KDE Neon other than being a slightly older version of Plasma.

elementary - I had high hopes for this one as a lot of people like it. It's been nothing but a pain in the ass. The touchpad doesn't work right. Every other Ubuntu based distro works just fine but this one is jerky and the cursor jumps all over the screen especially when two finger scrolling. They broke Ubuntu. I don't even know how you do that. Pantheon isn't a bad DE. It's nice looking and it's fluid. I hate it though as I hate the macOS look. I also have to ask did they really have to fork Mutter and chunks of the Gnome stack? Who knows but at least theirs works and is still nice and smooth unlike Cinnamon.

Antergos - Arch for the newbie user. The installer is wonderful. The options? So much better than any other installer out there. I chose MATE at my DE during the install. Then they give you options for your browser choice (Chromium or Firefox). They give you the option for installing UFW and GUFW comes with that. It's a very nice experience. It's Arch for a beginner. The only issue I found is that there is no good compositor included by default. So while I didn't have any tearing it was a little jerky until I install Compton. It's also interesting to see the difference between MATE here and MATE on Mint. Just little things like the desktop-settings piece isn't in Antergos. Meaning that nice chunk of code probably didn't make it back up the mainline into MATE itself. I haven't verified that though. Overall Antergos is a fork of a distro that truly aims at a target and hits the mark. Antergos wanted to make installing Arch easy in order to bring it to the masses. They did it wonderfully.

Arch - It's Arch. It's whatever you want it to be. Yes, it requires more work and requires the user to actually learn something for a change but the sky is the limit and you can change DEs all you want. :)

Solus - A distro built from the ground up and not just another Ubuntu derivative. If I can't have Arch I'll take Solus. Fast, fluid, and an original DE (Budgie) to top it off. Best part about Budgie is that is built on the Gnome stack (just like Pantheon) but they didn't fork anything. So it just friggin works and works really well. LTS kernel as well and with the recent edition of clr-boot-manager they're looking into also giving users the option to install supported mainstream kernels. Solus is doing things differently. They're making themselves appeal to the masses because they aren't just another Ubuntu fork.

Again I'm not trying to make it sound like more distros are a bad thing. I guess I'm just tired of seeing more and more forks of Ubuntu with a forked DE with a few changes from the original and a theme. It's starting to look at the Android custom ROM section of a Nexus device on XDA. Any day now I'm expecting to see a thread somewhere called "My t0t4lly b1ch1n L1nux d1str0". It'll be Ubuntu with XFCE, Compton and some new theme that looks like Windows.

Seriously though the forking needs to stop unless it really needs to be done. A lot of it feels like stuff is being forked just to fork it. Forks like that mean improvements probably don't go but up the mainline. That's not good. You also have the forks that totally fuck up the original. *cough* *muffin* *cough* Pantheon forked Mutter but at least that one still works. It's still a smooth and fluid interface.

So there you have it. Flame away! :D

I see no reason to flame someone who put so much effort into trying so many different distros. How many people simply say "Linux sucks" with no explanation or trying anything out ? Those people need flaming. So basically if I understand right you just feel most distros are pointless and would rather use Arch or Solus ?
 
Vermillion you have once again done a great job! I appreciate the time you are putting into this. As a neophyte, I find it quite helpful. Kudos! :)
 
Yep no flaming needed. Good info all around. I have never been a big fan of suggesting forks of forks. I have suggested mint once or twice based on all the positive things you tend to hear from new users. It sounds like depending on the hardware though its forked DE and composition software can be a big issue. Really though of everyone I know that ever started with Mint... its not the distro they ended up running long term. (for the record I did install it and run it for around a month around Oct/Nov and didn't notice any issues... perhaps they recently introduced an issue in their fork or my hardware didn't experience the same issues, Mint ran smooth for me the install was simple and installing Newer Nvidia drivers was painless and happened at install which I find nice for switchers)

Forks can be a great thing if they fill a niche. (I completely agree that many seem to only be, as they are vanity projects for someone... even though some of those pick up developers and become something interesting later.)

I am also a big Arch fan... and I suggest Manjaro often for its ease of hardware install, (and semi rolling, mostly weekly updates). It means they do tend to catch a handful of show stoppers before they get through without slowing releases down to the 3-4 month or longer times a lot of popular LTS type distros hold to. Antragos your right its right in between Manjaro and just installing Arch...

About all we can do is suggest as often as we can that new users start with distros that are not forks of forks... and that we know use Solid refined DE. When talking to new people looking to switch lately I just say Start with Gnome3... and a solid non forked multiple times distro like Fedora, SUSE, Ubuntu(they get a fork pass I think) or Arch (or in arches case Manjaro or Antragos as the install of Arch is going to require experience or patience and perhaps for most both lol)

Well that and setting the expectation that your first Linux install is not going to be your last. Expect to experiment a bit before you settle on a Distro and DE even.
 
Again I'm not trying to make it sound like more distros are a bad thing. I guess I'm just tired of seeing more and more forks of Ubuntu with a forked DE with a few changes from the original and a theme. It's starting to look at the Android custom ROM section of a Nexus device on XDA. Any day now I'm expecting to see a thread somewhere called "My t0t4lly b1ch1n L1nux d1str0". It'll be Ubuntu with XFCE, Compton and some new theme that looks like Windows.

Seriously though the forking needs to stop unless it really needs to be done. A lot of it feels like stuff is being forked just to fork it. Forks like that mean improvements probably don't go but up the mainline. That's not good. You also have the forks that totally fuck up the original. *cough* *muffin* *cough* Pantheon forked Mutter but at least that one still works. It's still a smooth and fluid interface.

I feel much the same. I have no problem with multiple distros.

But before someone builds a new one, they should answer a question:

What need does this Distro meet that isn't already being Met?

AKA. What is the point here?

Because I also got the feeling that most Distros are another Debian/Ubuntu derivative with a new theme.

If you want a new look. Fine, make a kick ass theme package. Why does it have to be whole distro, which is just based of some other distro with no real good functional change.
 
I see no reason to flame someone who put so much effort into trying so many different distros. How many people simply say "Linux sucks" with no explanation or trying anything out ? Those people need flaming. So basically if I understand right you just feel most distros are pointless and would rather use Arch or Solus ?

I don't think most distros are pointless. It comes down to the specific reason behind it and how they did it.

For example Mint was forked from Ubuntu because the developer "wanted to make Ubuntu elegant" they also wanted a different DE. So the original reason for forking is OK in my book. I fully admit Mint Cinnamon is nice looking. The problem there is when they forked Mutter they fucked it up. So you have stable Linux distro that's pretty good but takes a kick in the ass because of the subpar window manager. The addition of DEs is kind of inevitable I guess but still more stuff you have to support underneath it all. Ubuntu already does MATE. So why does Mint need it too? When you compare Ubuntu MATE to Mint MATE there shouldn't be any differences honestly speaking. If there is then that means one of the two distros made changes and didn't send those back up the mainline. This can be seen (although like I said I can't confirm yet) with the differences in MATE on Antergos and Mint MATE. Mint MATE has that nice Desktop Settings option where you can easily choose the compositor yet Antergos MATE does not. So if that setting is ONLY in Mint and hasn't been pushed upstream that's very bad. A nice setting like that should be pushed back upstream so everyone benefits.

KDE Neon has a reason for being. Some people want to be on the cutting edge of KDE but they like the stability of Ubuntu. Neon fits that bill. But Neon also isn't changing anything else. They're simply using a rolling release version of KDE. That's not bad at all.

Snowdog said it right:

Snowdog said:
If you want a new look. Fine, make a kick ass theme package. Why does it have to be whole distro, which is just based of some other distro with no real good functional change.
 
People need to understand the open source nature of Linux.

Individuals are free to fork all they like, there's tinkerers that fork a distro because it suits their needs better and think 'why not put it out there and see what the rest of the community thinks about it' and there's nothing anyone can do to stop this as that's the nature of an OS by the people. As stated, these distro's are in the top ten on distro watch, so obviously someone finds them useful and obviously such distro's work for them considering their hardware configuration - The idea is that with such a wide range of options you can find a distro that works for you, if not build one that does.

The example concerning Linux Mint and Muffin highlights why a common platform among distro's is quite possibly the worst idea anyone could come up with - Linux is about freedom, embrace it or stick to Windows. Gawd, imagine if every distro used Gnome3 and Mutter (which is also tied to the install).

For the record, I use Ubuntu MATE and I experience none of the issues you're describing - So your complaints aren't specifically targeting Ubuntu derivatives. I've also used Arch and derivatives, due to the fact that these days my OS runs my business I prefer a distro that just works, in my experience Ubuntu MATE just works.
 
People need to understand the open source nature of Linux.

Individuals are free to fork all they like, there's tinkerers that fork a distro because it suits their needs better and think 'why not put it out there and see what the rest of the community thinks about it' and there's nothing anyone can do to stop this as that's the nature of an OS by the people. As stated, these distro's are in the top ten on distro watch, so obviously someone finds them useful and obviously such distro's work for them considering their hardware configuration - The idea is that with such a wide range of options you can find a distro that works for you, if not build one that does.

The example concerning Linux Mint and Muffin highlights why a common platform among distro's is quite possibly the worst idea anyone could come up with - Linux is about freedom, embrace it or stick to Windows.

For the record, I use Ubuntu MATE and I experience none of the issues you're describing - So your complaints aren't specifically targeting Ubuntu derivatives. I've also used Arch and derivatives, due to the fact that these days my OS runs my business I prefer a distro that just works, in my experience Ubuntu MATE just works.

And I never said anything bad about MATE in any way. I've only spoken nicely about it (it's a very good DE and I used to run it on Arch) including the Mint version. All I said about Mint version was why does it exist if it offers nothing beyond what Ubuntu MATE offers? At that point for Mint the DE MATE just offers another layer of complexity which really isn't needed and they could put extra manpower back into making Cinnamon even better. I mean honestly what's the difference between Ubuntu MATE and Mint MATE? Not much. So why do we have two distros that are nearly identical?

Just because something can be forked doesn't mean it needs to be. LibreSSL certainly wasn't needed after Heartbleed was discovered in OpenSSL. LibreOffice on the other hand was a needed fork after Oracle fucked OpenOffice.

Oh and the reason you probably haven't seen those issues on Ubuntu MATE is that Ubuntu MATE comes with Compiz. If your CPU is powerful enough then Marco (software renderer) may be able to handle it but are you using Marco or Compiz for compositing?

The example concerning Linux Mint and Muffin highlights why a common platform among distro's is quite possibly the worst idea anyone could come up with - Linux is about freedom, embrace it or stick to Windows.

But the price of freedom shouldn't be a subpar experience as that defeats the purpose of open source. I also never said forking Mutter was unnecessary. What I did was question why they forked it because they fucked it up in the process. Elementary with Pantheon forked Mutter but didn't fuck it up.

Forking software means you want to add to it because it doesn't meet your needs. So you improve it and hopefully some of those changes make it up upstream. I did this back in the day with an iptables firewall for Android. Droidwall was the original. Android Firewall was mine. I added a shitload of new functionality to Droidwall. I would have sent it upstream but the reason I forked it was because the original developer of Droidwall sold it to Avast. That's why Avast has a firewall for rooted Android devices. ;)
 
I don't see the problem since there's such a low barrier to fork. The worst side effect is really just the noise it can make to find things.
In my mind, it's similar saying that it's a negative to the Art Community that 1st graders make hand turkeys. Even if they put all their effort into it, it wouldn't necessarily make a new masterpiece in the art world, and if they did, it wouldn't detract from the Mona Lisa.

Hannah Montana Linux anyone?
 
I don't see the problem since there's such a low barrier to fork. The worst side effect is really just the noise it can make to find things.
In my mind, it's similar saying that it's a negative to the Art Community that 1st graders make hand turkeys. Even if they put all their effort into it, it wouldn't necessarily make a new masterpiece in the art world, and if they did, it wouldn't detract from the Mona Lisa.

Hannah Montana Linux anyone?
Whelp, that is one distro I'm not really interested in trying... :ROFLMAO:
 
And I never said anything bad about MATE in any way. I've only spoken nicely about it (it's a very good DE and I used to run it on Arch) including the Mint version. All I said about Mint version was why does it exist if it offers nothing beyond what Ubuntu MATE offers? At that point for Mint the DE MATE just offers another layer of complexity which really isn't needed and they could put extra manpower back into making Cinnamon even better. I mean honestly what's the difference between Ubuntu MATE and Mint MATE? Not much. So why do we have two distros that are nearly identical?

Just because something can be forked doesn't mean it needs to be. LibreSSL certainly wasn't needed after Heartbleed was discovered in OpenSSL. LibreOffice on the other hand was a needed fork after Oracle fucked OpenOffice.

Oh and the reason you probably haven't seen those issues on Ubuntu MATE is that Ubuntu MATE comes with Compiz. If your CPU is powerful enough then Marco (software renderer) may be able to handle it but are you using Marco or Compiz for compositing?

You're still not really getting it, you cannot stop forking on a platform that's open source and free to be modified at will. Yes, there is Linux Mint MATE and Ubuntu MATE - Now there's Ubuntu 17.10 with Gnome 3 and Ubuntu Gnome, all fairly good operating systems with subtle differences as the developers found that the original solution just didn't suit their needs as perfectly as they liked so they created a fork. While it doesn't suit your needs, somewhere there is an individual that thinks that fork is the ducks guts, the idea is to browse and hopefully choose the distro that suits your needs best, if it doesn't than try another one until you find a distro that does - Bear in mind that Linux Mint MATE is actually ok, it's Linux Mint Cinnamon that required desktop composition to be disabled in some cases.

You're effectively arguing that freedom of choice is a bad thing - Which I find in itself disappointing, if not a little concerning. What sort of society do we live in where people want to be locked down and controlled?

As for your sub par experience, my experience under Linux has been fine, but towards the end of using primarily Windows I can say that my experience was sub par and due to elements out of my control there was nothing I could do to rectify that - Under Linux I have options.
 
You're still not really getting it, you cannot stop forking on a platform that's open source and free to be modified at will. Yes, there is Linux Mint MATE and Ubuntu MATE - Now there's Ubuntu 17.10 with Gnome 3 and Ubuntu Gnome, all fairly good operating systems with subtle differences as the developers found that the original solution just didn't suit their needs as perfectly as they liked so they created a fork. While it doesn't suit your needs, somewhere there is an individual that thinks that fork is the ducks guts, the idea is to browse and hopefully choose the distro that suits your needs best, if it doesn't than try another one until you find a distro that does - Bear in mind that Linux Mint MATE is actually ok, it's Linux Mint Cinnamon that required desktop composition to be disabled in some cases.

You're effectively arguing that freedom of choice is a bad thing - Which I find in itself disappointing, if not a little concerning. What sort of society do we live in where people want to be locked down and controlled?

As for your sub par experience, my experience under Linux has been fine, but towards the end of using primarily Windows I can say that my experience was sub par and due to elements out of my control there was nothing I could do to rectify that - Under Linux I have options.

No, you're the one not getting it.

Ubuntu 17.10 with Gnome 3 IS Ubuntu Gnome. Ubuntu Gnome is what Canonical is using to replace Unity. They have straight up said that. So your example there is completely misses the mark about Mint MATE vs Ubuntu MATE.

And I'm not missing the point. Where have I ever said forking is a bad thing? No where. What I've asked is do they really need to fork? If they do fine. If they don't fine. However, if you DO fork don't fuck it up. Cinnamon forked Mutter. They fucked it up. Pantheon forked Mutter. They did it right. Big difference.

Freedom to fork is a good thing. Forking simply to fork though doesn't do any good. It only muddies the water.

Mint Cinnamon right now is the most "popular" distro. Yet, it's a subpar experience with no way to fix it outside of having a $6K computer like Heatlesssun. How is a shitty user experience going to win people over? Newsflash...it won't.
 
No, you're the one not getting it.

Ubuntu 17.10 with Gnome 3 IS Ubuntu Gnome. Ubuntu Gnome is what Canonical is using to replace Unity. They have straight up said that. So your example there is completely misses the mark about Mint MATE vs Ubuntu MATE.

And I'm not missing the point. Where have I ever said forking is a bad thing? No where. What I've asked is do they really need to fork? If they do fine. If they don't fine. However, if you DO fork don't fuck it up. Cinnamon forked Mutter. They fucked it up. Pantheon forked Mutter. They did it right. Big difference.

Freedom to fork is a good thing. Forking simply to fork though doesn't do any good. It only muddies the water.

Mint Cinnamon right now is the most "popular" distro. Yet, it's a subpar experience with no way to fix it outside of having a $6K computer like Heatlesssun. How is a shitty user experience going to win people over? Newsflash...it won't.

Have I attacked you? Settle down.

I compared Ubuntu 17.04 and Ubuntu Gnome as both use the Gnome 3 desktop, therefore both are an example of conflicting forks as they both run the Gnome 3 DE which in your opinion is pointless as there is no reason for one to exist - However there is as both contain subtle differences while sharing the same DE that the developers thought was an important consideration. If one, or the other, does not suit yourself use something else or please - Stick to Windows.

In the case of Linux Mint Cinnamon: Disable desktop composition and all issues will be resolved, performance will improve slightly in games and GPU intensive tasks and I can't think of a modern processor that will not be able to handle desktop composition just fine with no downsides whatsoever. Is is unacceptable that the Linux Mint team haven't rectified this issue yet? My word it is!

But, under Linux you have a million other distro's to choose from, so who gives a crap? Obviously the issue does not affect everyone as the distro is up the top of distro watch, just to state the bleeding obvious!

I ran Linux Mint Cinnamon for years just fine using Nvidia hardware, dual monitors and Xeon processors, I have no doubt that Heatlesssun's extreme example wouldn't run Linux Mint Cinnamon just fine and I'm not too sure just what you're ranting on about or why you decided it was necessary to bring what's most likely the top 5% of desktop PC's into the discussion.

Once again, if you don't like the fork the answer is really simple - Don't use it. As Frobozz stated, at worst an unnessecary fork is no more than noise that could make the decision making process more difficult for some, what are you going to do about it? You can't stop forking in an open source environment nor should you want to.
 
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The problem with linux is that arch is not a distro for the windows masses. The vast majority of computer users are not intelligent enough to set up arch. What linux needs is a windows of linux. A dumbed down experience.
 
Have I attacked you? Settle down.

I compared Ubuntu 17.04 and Ubuntu Gnome as both use the Gnome 3 desktop, therefore both are an example of conflicting forks as they both run the Gnome 3 DE which in your opinion is pointless as there is no reason for one to exist - However there is as both contain subtle differences while sharing the same DE that the developers thought was an important consideration. If one, or the other, does not suit yourself use something else or please - Stick to Windows.

In the case of Linux Mint Cinnamon: Disable desktop composition and all issues will be resolved, performance will improve slightly in games and GPU intensive tasks and I can't think of a modern processor that will not be able to handle desktop composition just fine with no downsides whatsoever. Is is unacceptable that the Linux Mint team haven't rectified this issue yet? My word it is!

But, under Linux you have a million other distro's to choose from, so who gives a crap? Obviously the issue does not affect everyone as the distro is up the top of distro watch, just to state the bleeding obvious!

I ran Linux Mint Cinnamon for years just fine using Nvidia hardware, dual monitors and Xeon processors, I have no doubt that Heatlesssun's extreme example wouldn't run Linux Mint Cinnamon just fine and I'm not too sure just what you're ranting on about or why you decided it was necessary to bring what's most likely the top 5% of desktop PC's into the discussion.

Once again, if you don't like the fork the answer is really simple - Don't use it. As Frobozz stated, at worst an unnessecary fork is no more than noise that could make the decision making process more difficult for some, what are you going to do about it? You can't stop forking in an open source environment nor should you want to.

Holy shit!

Firstly:

Bulletdust said:
You're still not really getting it

You're the one who said it first. So please don't tell me to settle down.

Secondly:

Ubuntu 17.04 does NOT use Gnome. It uses Unity. 17.10 is the first version of Ubuntu to use Gnome 3. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-17.10-GNOME-Switch The first betas just hit.

Now there is a community version of Ubuntu that does use Gnome, but that isn't the Canonical supported version. That community version, with some changes, is becoming the official Ubuntu 17.10 and will be on the 18.04 LTS release next year.

You are correct in stating that the issue with Mint Cinnamon doesn't affect everybody. However, if you're a Windows diehard looking to jump to Linux and you go to distro watch what version are you likley to use first? Oh I don't know...maybe, just maybe you'll choose the most popular version. Seems like a pretty good assumption. I know not to use Mint Cinnamon. However, those people looking to move from Windows sure as shit won't. So your whole "if you don't like the fork don't use it" comment doesn't hold water. You keep arguing that people need to switch to Linux in order to get developer support for things like games. How would giving users a subpar experience bring them over from Windows?

When it comes to forks like I said earlier part of the point of forking is to make that software your own and then send your code back upstream (if possible) into the mainline. If it's accepted great. If not oh well. At least you tried.

And for the record I just loaded up Ubuntu MATE 17.04 on my older laptop. AMD A8 APU. 8GB RAM. 256 SSD. Software compositor by default. It's OK. Not perfect but very noticeable to some one who has been on a GPU accelerated desktop. For some reason they aren't using AMDGPU. They're using the old Radeon open source driver. Horribly subpar performance with that driver and I'm not fucking with removing that driver tonight. It was always a whore. I'm also not dealing with installing the proprietary ones because then I need to fuck with X as well. Now that's not a knock again Ubuntu MATE as my hardware config is atypical being an AMD APU. Most will be Intel which will run better. For example I bet Ubuntu MATE runs far better on the E5470 at work. It's just a question as why Ubuntu with kernel 4.10.x isn't using the newer open source driver that is far superior to the old open source driver.

The driver issues aside, since they are issues in any OS, what I do find funny is the lack of features in Ubuntu MATE and Antergos MATE versus Mint MATE which ties right back into the forking issue.

Why does Ubuntu MATE and Antergos MATE differ from Mint MATE? Specifically the Desktop Settings option that easily allows you to choose your compositor. That would most likely be a fork that doesn't bother sending code back upstream. So yes. That's a big fucking problem for the Linux community.

The problem with linux is that arch is not a distro for the windows masses. The vast majority of computer users are not intelligent enough to set up arch. What linux needs is a windows of linux. A dumbed down experience.

No Arch itself is not a distro for the masses. However, Arch derivatives like Antergos and Manjaro are. The Antergos installer puts pretty much any other Linux installer to shame.

The problem isn't the distro. It's how some of the distros do things because some of the choices they make aren't helping the Linux community.
 
You're the one who said it first. So please don't tell me to settle down.

Secondly:

Ubuntu 17.04 does NOT use Gnome. It uses Unity. 17.10 is the first version of Ubuntu to use Gnome 3. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-17.10-GNOME-Switch The first betas just hit.

Now there is a community version of Ubuntu that does use Gnome, but that isn't the Canonical supported version. That community version, with some changes, is becoming the official Ubuntu 17.10 and will be on the 18.04 LTS release next year.

You are correct in stating that the issue with Mint Cinnamon doesn't affect everybody. However, if you're a Windows diehard looking to jump to Linux and you go to distro watch what version are you likley to use first? Oh I don't know...maybe, just maybe you'll choose the most popular version. Seems like a pretty good assumption. I know not to use Mint Cinnamon. However, those people looking to move from Windows sure as shit won't. So your whole "if you don't like the fork don't use it" comment doesn't hold water. You keep arguing that people need to switch to Linux in order to get developer support for things like games. How would giving users a subpar experience bring them over from Windows?

When it comes to forks like I said earlier part of the point of forking is to make that software your own and then send your code back upstream (if possible) into the mainline. If it's accepted great. If not oh well. At least you tried.

And for the record I just loaded up Ubuntu MATE 17.04 on my older laptop. AMD A8 APU. 8GB RAM. 256 SSD. Software compositor by default. It's OK. Not perfect but very noticeable to some one who has been on a GPU accelerated desktop. For some reason they aren't using AMDGPU. They're using the old Radeon open source driver. Horribly subpar performance with that driver and I'm not fucking with removing that driver tonight. It was always a whore. I'm also not dealing with installing the proprietary ones because then I need to fuck with X as well. Now that's not a knock again Ubuntu MATE as my hardware config is atypical being an AMD APU. Most will be Intel which will run better. For example I bet Ubuntu MATE runs far better on the E5470 at work. It's just a question as why Ubuntu with kernel 4.10.x isn't using the newer open source driver that is far superior to the old open source driver.

The driver issues aside, since they are issues in any OS, what I do find funny is the lack of features in Ubuntu MATE and Antergos MATE versus Mint MATE which ties right back into the forking issue.

Why does Ubuntu MATE and Antergos MATE differ from Mint MATE? Specifically the Desktop Settings option that easily allows you to choose your compositor. That would most likely be a fork that doesn't bother sending code back upstream. So yes. That's a big fucking problem for the Linux community.

Firstly, you're taking my comment way out of context, perhaps I should have used an emoticon.

Secondly, you're beginning to nitpick now over issues that no OS is immune to. Forking is a part of open source, open source is about freedom, I struggle to comprehend how an individual can argue that there can be such a thing as too much freedom when they have the options to ignore a fork if it doesn't benefit them.

And again, I ran Mint Cinnamon for two years without a single issue once desktop composition was disabled.

Like the underlying principles of Linux, you're free to believe whatever you like, but don't start attacking when people disagree with your point of view for good reason.
 
The problem with linux is that arch is not a distro for the windows masses. The vast majority of computer users are not intelligent enough to set up arch. What linux needs is a windows of linux. A dumbed down experience.

Manjaro closest thing. :p

Really though the main issue is and always will be... asking regular people to install an operating system to start with.

Lets be honest a lot of people are just never going to be capable of installing any Operating system themselves. (windows included).

We need more Linux OEM support.... Nothing at all stopping oems from selling Arch systems already running. (I know will never happen... Ubuntu right now and perhaps forever is our only OEM hope)
 
Manjaro closest thing. :p

Really though the main issue is and always will be... asking regular people to install an operating system to start with.

Lets be honest a lot of people are just never going to be capable of installing any Operating system themselves. (windows included).

We need more Linux OEM support.... Nothing at all stopping oems from selling Arch systems already running. (I know will never happen... Ubuntu right now and perhaps forever is our only OEM hope)

I know of two people, both PC enthusiasts, that can install Windows unassisted. Apart from that I know of no one that can install an OS - Period.
 
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I know of two people, both PC enthusiasts, that can install Windows unassisted. Apart from that I know of no one that can install an OS - Period.

Installing OSes just isn't something that people do these days. I think a person who's generally capable, able to read instructions, had some experience with any kind of repair work, could probably install either Windows or Linux on well enough behaving hardware without to much issue. It's simply a matter of doing for the first time and being comfortable with something.
 
Seriously though the forking needs to stop unless it really needs to be done.

:cat:
F***g MEOW! I mean YES.
Fragmentation is good if it leads to new interesting features being developed or existing features polished.

Good products of these actions defend themselves and will eventually return to their source because a demand will appear for them.

However, there's the 1337 factor of having 'your own' Linux distribution that appeals to certain people. A serious developer will not fall victim to this. Let the children play. What's dangerous is when those people advertise as being better than X or 'perfect' or 'like Windows'.
 
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Installing OSes just isn't something that people do these days. I think a person who's generally capable, able to read instructions, had some experience with any kind of repair work, could probably install either Windows or Linux on well enough behaving hardware without to much issue. It's simply a matter of doing for the first time and being comfortable with something.

Sure its not beyond many people if they give it an honest effort and understand what to do before hand. As you say its just not something people do in general anymore. So sure expecting the masses to switch to Linux on existing hardware is a stretch. If a user buys a machine already running Linux, its not much different then buying one running MacOS or Windows. Linux usability is very good, and on par with the other options... install issues, drivers... choosing a Distro a FS a DE ect is asking a lot of the average user.

OEMS iron out driver issues for Windows machines when they ship them.... and Apple would never ship a machine without good driver support clearly. I have never heard of issues when people buy Ubuntu machines from Dell or System76 either.

The only way Linux gets wide spread use is if OEMs start shipping a lot more Linux machines. Asking end users to install Linux on their computers that shipped with Windows will always be an uphill battle in a ton of ways.
 
:cat:
F***g MEOW! I mean YES.
Fragmentation is good if it leads to new interesting features being developed or existing features polished.

Good products of these actions defend themselves and will eventually return to their source because a demand will appear for them.

However, there's the 1337 factor of having 'your own' Linux distribution that appeals to certain people. A serious developer will not fall victim to this. Let the children play. What's dangerous is when those people advertise as being better than X or 'perfect' or 'like Windows'.

Exactly, 1001 distros is fine. What isn't is 101 that all say Perfect for you noobie never touched linux windows users. Having said that I do like Mint and am still curious if they didn't perhaps mess something up recently as I didn't experience the same issues with mint just a few months back, and I was running it on so so hardware.

I think Linux people in general need to simplify the lists of distros we suggest to new users. Lots of people are willing to check Linux out and see if its for them. They get a lot of confusing advice though.... far to many "don't go Gnome" "I hate Ubuntu" "This Fork of a Fork Distro with a custom DE that has 4 unpaid developers is what you should try out first" Type advice.

More of us simply need to say... try Gnome or KDE first; install Vanilla Ubuntu... Install Vanilla Fedora... Install Vanilla Suse. (perhaps I am guilty myself of mentioning Manjaro all the time lol)
 
Exactly, 1001 distros is fine. What isn't is 101 that all say Perfect for you noobie never touched linux windows users. Having said that I do like Mint and am still curious if they didn't perhaps mess something up recently as I didn't experience the same issues with mint just a few months back, and I was running it on so so hardware.

I think Linux people in general need to simplify the lists of distros we suggest to new users. Lots of people are willing to check Linux out and see if its for them. They get a lot of confusing advice though.... far to many "don't go Gnome" "I hate Ubuntu" "This Fork of a Fork Distro with a custom DE that has 4 unpaid developers is what you should try out first" Type advice.

More of us simply need to say... try Gnome or KDE first; install Vanilla Ubuntu... Install Vanilla Fedora... Install Vanilla Suse. (perhaps I am guilty myself of mentioning Manjaro all the time lol)

I know I'm drifting off topic here but what's completely unacceptable to me when booting just about any distro is when the graphics driver cannot start. This is completely appaling. It's more of a dealbreaker than wifi not working.
That said, work bought me an Asrock H110 board and the Windows 7 installer couldn't recognize my USB mouse/KB. That's a dealbreaker too. Manual said it needs a modified installer with xHCI slipstreamed in. MEH.
I might just try out a few distributions (probably Mint and Debian) on the Kaby Lake they got me to see is everything works, especially the USB part.
 
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I know I'm drifting off topic here but what's completely unacceptable to me when booting just about any distro is when the graphics driver cannot start. This is completely appaling. It's more of a dealbreaker than wifi not working.
That said, work bought me an Asrock H110 board and the Windows 7 installer couldn't recognize my USB mouse/KB. That's a dealbreaker too. Manual said it needs a modified installer with xHCI slipstreamed in. MEH.
I might just try out a few distributions (probably Mint and Debian) on the Kaby Lake they got me to see is everything works, especially the USB part.

Indeed their are annoyances installing almost every OS. If your going to try out a distro... I know I just said I'm guilty of talking about a "fork" type distro. However give Manjaro a try instead of Mint. Arch is loved by neck beard types cause its fast solid and has a great software repository. Arch however is not very user friendly to setup... Manjaro is based on it but with the same type of non-free GPU installer that Mint uses. My suggestion is Manjaro-Gnome. Gnome 3 is imo the most solid of the DE... and it without question has the most main stream support. (some people do hate gnome... but really it has Red Hat, Suse, and now Ubuntu behind, so pretty much 100% commercial Linux support). It should install with Kernel 4.9 the current LTS which should support everything in your system no issues... updating to newer kernels is a one click.
 
I know I'm drifting off topic here but what's completely unacceptable to me when booting just about any distro is when the graphics driver cannot start. This is completely appaling. It's more of a dealbreaker than wifi not working.
That said, work bought me an Asrock H110 board and the Windows 7 installer couldn't recognize my USB mouse/KB. That's a dealbreaker too. Manual said it needs a modified installer with xHCI slipstreamed in. MEH.
I might just try out a few distributions (probably Mint and Debian) on the Kaby Lake they got me to see is everything works, especially the USB part.

You know the first time I installed Windows 10 I had an Nvidia driver not start after I installed and rebooted, quite a common issue at the time with Windows booting to a black screen with a blinking cursor. However not once did I think it was a widespread issue affecting Windows as a whole, such an assumption would be outright foolish.

If anyone has an issue with a distro, take it up with the developers, otherwise use another distro. Bear in mind that if all anyone had was one distro to rule them all, there'd be no options whatsoever.

Open source is freedom, freedom for anyone do fork as they please - You cannot stop it, there's no point complaining about it. Microsoft know they can't stop it, so they're trying to embrace it in an attempt to lure users back to Windows, problem is that won't work either as Linux users know exactly what they're doing. Where you had a keyboard not work under Windows (first time I've heard about that, are you sure you're not plugging it into USB 3.0 connections before necessary drivers are installed?), I found a Bluetooth dongle in a drawer, plugged it in and it worked fine, I plugged in my Canoscan scanner and it worked perfectly all under Linux.

Once again, Both Linux and Windows are different to macOS, Android and iOS as they have to work on an abundance of hardware variants - Expecting outright perfection regarding any OS in this scenario is simply unrealistic no matter how anyone wants to spin it. Yes, it can be assumed that Windows is naturally better in this regard due solely to usage statistics, but Linux isn't as bad as the witch hunters are making it out to be in this regard either.

Good job experimenting with Linux. :)
 
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You know the first time I installed Windows 10 I had an Nvidia driver not start after I installed and rebooted, quite a common issue at the time with Windows booting to a black screen with a blinking cursor. However not once did I think it was a widespread issue affecting Windows as a whole, such an assumption would be outright foolish.

If anyone has an issue with a distro, take it up with the developers, otherwise use another distro. Bear in mind that if all anyone had was one distro to rule them all, there'd be no options whatsoever.

Open source is freedom, freedom for anyone do fork as they please - You cannot stop it, there's no point complaining about it. Microsoft know they can't stop it, so they're trying to embrace it in an attempt to lure users back to Windows, problem is that won't work either as Linux users know exactly what they're doing. Where you had a keyboard not work under Windows (first time I've heard about that, are you sure you're not plugging it into USB 3.0 connections before necessary drivers are installed?), I found a Bluetooth dongle in a drawer, plugged it in and it worked fine, I plugged in my Canoscan scanner and it worked perfectly all under Linux.

Once again, Both Linux and Windows are different to macOS, Android and iOS as they have to work on an abundance of hardware variants - Expecting outright perfection regarding any OS in this scenario is simply unrealistic no matter how anyone wants to spin it. Yes, it can be assumed that Windows is naturally better in this regard due solely to usage statistics, but Linux isn't as bad as the witch hunters are making it out to be in this regard either.

Good job experimenting with Linux. :)

I get what you mean. I'm not a quitter. Plugged in a ps/2 set and off I went.
However, seeing as they sold me a 10 Pro license, I ultimately went with that one. Fun fact - my mobo was 100% supported under 10, I even put away installing the mobo vendor's drivers. Everything works so far.
I was concerned it would reset my settings after I applied an update - thankfully it let me choose my default mail/video/browser/etc programs during update config and all is well.
Because it's the Pro edition, it lets me postpone update install. I left around 20 gigs of SSD space and I'll install Linux later on so I have a dual boot setup should Windows croak.
 
I get what you mean. I'm not a quitter. Plugged in a ps/2 set and off I went.
However, seeing as they sold me a 10 Pro license, I ultimately went with that one. Fun fact - my mobo was 100% supported under 10, I even put away installing the mobo vendor's drivers. Everything works so far.
I was concerned it would reset my settings after I applied an update - thankfully it let me choose my default mail/video/browser/etc programs during update config and all is well.
Because it's the Pro edition, it lets me postpone update install. I left around 20 gigs of SSD space and I'll install Linux later on so I have a dual boot setup should Windows croak.

You sound like you actually want to learn as opposed to simply saying "it's not Windows" and blame Linux for everything. Good job, if you ever need any assistance I'm only a PM away. :)
 
So I did go back this morning and play with 3 distros on the E5470. Ubuntu MATE (wanted to compare against my A8-4500M system from last night), Zorin, and Manjaro. I really wanted to take a look at Deepin but even at home it was telling me 2 days to download. lol

Ubuntu MATE much better out of the box experience on the Intel system than on my A8-4500M running the old ATI open source driver which is garbage. I'm sure that removing the ATI driver and installing the AMDGPU driver though would correct those issues. Not sure why they aren't including the AMDGPU driver instead of the old ATI driver especially since they ship with kernel 4.10 and that had a ton of HUGE performance enhancements for AMDGPU. But no big deal really.

Zorin is actually a really nice fork of Ubuntu LTS. It has it's own DE built on top Gnome Shell and it's smooth as butter right out of the box. They actually make it different and it's a good different. It's a classic Start Menu style interface but a lot of it is integrated into the shell. For example you can hit the Super L key and just type 12 + 2 and it shows you 14. What they've done is integrate some of the apps right into the shell so when you type a formula like that it actually interfaces with the calculator. It's actually really slick.

Manjaro is another great version of Arch being made mainstream and easy to use and install. I think I like Antergos more simply because it gives you more options for DEs but you can't go wrong with either version.


Exactly, 1001 distros is fine. What isn't is 101 that all say Perfect for you noobie never touched linux windows users. Having said that I do like Mint and am still curious if they didn't perhaps mess something up recently as I didn't experience the same issues with mint just a few months back, and I was running it on so so hardware.

I think Linux people in general need to simplify the lists of distros we suggest to new users. Lots of people are willing to check Linux out and see if its for them. They get a lot of confusing advice though.... far to many "don't go Gnome" "I hate Ubuntu" "This Fork of a Fork Distro with a custom DE that has 4 unpaid developers is what you should try out first" Type advice.

More of us simply need to say... try Gnome or KDE first; install Vanilla Ubuntu... Install Vanilla Fedora... Install Vanilla Suse. (perhaps I am guilty myself of mentioning Manjaro all the time lol)

This is exactly what I'm getting at. Yeah you can't stop forking. But seriously make sure that the fork is needed before you fork. With Ubuntu dropping LightDM we'll see LightDM forked a dozen times within days. Sad thing is we don't need the dozen forks that are going to happen. We just need ONE fork of LightDM for the community to modify and use. Honestly what we really need is for LightDM to be transferred to Github and moved to GPL instead of allowing it to languish under CLA and LaunchPad. :p
 
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Exactly, 1001 distros is fine. What isn't is 101 that all say Perfect for you noobie never touched linux windows users. Having said that I do like Mint and am still curious if they didn't perhaps mess something up recently as I didn't experience the same issues with mint just a few months back, and I was running it on so so hardware.

This is exactly what I'm getting at. Yeah you can't stop forking. But seriously make sure that the fork is needed before you fork. With Ubuntu dropping LightDM we'll see LightDM forked a dozen times within days. Sad thing is we don't need the dozen forks that are going to happen. We just need ONE fork of LightDM for the community to modify and use. Honestly what we really need is for LightDM to be transferred to Github and moved to GPL instead of allowing it to languish under CLA and LaunchPad. :p

I understand your comments and opinions about the distros. I think sometimes what we lose sight of in these days is the history of why the distributions were forked to begin with. A lot of times you will get a fork over a legitimate issue over including something in a release, and so the distros take separate paths, but somewhere down the line, they end up including the same things again as the kernel advances. So while now they may seem very similar, sometime in the past they may have been different. And if you already have a wildly popular, distro, you just keep rumbling onward.

That being said, it would be nice if distros that forked, merged back at some point when their goals seemed to re-align, keeping the number of somewhat unnecessary forks down and increasing the support for the distro by merging those communities. Luckily those who have used Linux and various distros for some time, are used to perusing different distro support communities to help solve issues in their own forked distro. That is part of what makes the Linux community and support structure great. While there is tons of variety, there is still common practices and solutions that work across numerous builds.
 
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Seriously though the forking needs to stop unless it really needs to be done. A lot of it feels like stuff is being forked just to fork it.
I would just like to say that I absolutely can not agree with this enough. This fork of a fork of a fork of a fork of a spoon crap has really started to get old. I mean, even Ubuntu has moved away from the whole "not made here" philosophy and is going back to you know, contributing to the community. I love Cinnamon, but I really think the approach they took was too extreme. Mint has done a lot of great things, but making their own distro, repo's, etc just because they didn't like the default DE was kinda silly. Same goes for Solus, but at least they created their own platform, package management, etc.

EDIT: To further elaborate on my thoughts about Cinnamon, the proper approach probably should have been to develop a new DE and just use Ubuntu wholesale as the base. This is what the KDE Neon team did. Neon is basically just Ubuntu but a "distro" made by the KDE team as the KDE utopia. I personally see the Mint team as DE developers more than OS developers, and I think that if they had gone that route they could dedicate more time to making Cinnamon awesome without having to worry about all the other crap that goes along with maintaining a full distro. The problem with this kind of forking is it results in a total loss of focus due to feature creep.
 
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Manjaro is another great version of Arch being made mainstream and easy to use and install. I think I like Antergos more simply because it gives you more options for DEs but you can't go wrong with either version.
So, check out the community releases as well. Manjaro only has 3 official releases, but their community releases page also includes almost every other DE/WM you can think of. https://manjaro.org/community-editions/

I personally run Manjaro Cinnamon and love it.
 
That is part of what makes the Linux community and support structure great. While there is tons of variety, there is still common practices and solutions that work across numerous builds.

I have said this in a few threads at this point. Standards are the only thing that allow so many distros to share so much. I get that X or Y distro looks very different to a new set of Linux eyes. To people that have been around for awhile and through a few distros, you start to realise outside of a few bits and pieces their isn't much difference between any of them. We just need to do a better job of pointing the new kids to the "purest" (can't think of a better word) distros... they are not going to understand why X or Y was forked, and its not likely going to matter to them. :)

I think we have gotten to a point now where the, "designed for the windows switcher" type distros are pretty much BS... and Linux people should just steer new users the heck away from those types of forks. Ubuntu proper... Fedora... SUSE... lets all be honest at this point they are all as easy (and often easier) to install and setup then the windows switcher forks anyway. Then after a few months on a "mainstream" well supported distro... if someone says I wish this did that, or this worked in a slightly different way. Then perhaps they can look at the distros that forked for exactly those reasons, or find distros like Gentoo and Arch if they decide they want infinite control ect. (I imagine most will just stay with the solid dependable distros anyway once they are on them... at least they won't run into the support forums with 2 users and the like you find with many of the worst forked projects).
 
EDIT: To further elaborate on my thoughts about Cinnamon, the proper approach probably should have been to develop a new DE and just use Ubuntu wholesale as the base. This is what the KDE Neon team did. Neon is basically just Ubuntu but a "distro" made by the KDE team as the KDE utopia. I personally see the Mint team as DE developers more than OS developers, and I think that if they had gone that route they could dedicate more time to making Cinnamon awesome without having to worry about all the other crap that goes along with maintaining a full distro. The problem with this kind of forking is it results in a total loss of focus due to feature creep.

That was actually more or less how Mint started. They actually "forked" off from Kubuntu, and ended up adopting the Ubuntu base. Then later on they decided to switch up the DE. The whole Mint story is fairly strange though. I personally think the issues were more ego based than actual distro need based, but that is my opinion.
 
I would just like to say that I absolutely can not agree with this enough. This fork of a fork of a fork of a fork of a spoon crap has really started to get old. I mean, even Ubuntu has moved away from the whole "not made here" philosophy and is going back to you know, contributing to the community. I love Cinnamon, but I really think the approach they took was too extreme. Mint has done a lot of great things, but making their own distro, repo's, etc just because they didn't like the default DE was kinda silly. Same goes for Solus, but at least they created their own platform, package management, etc.

EDIT: To further elaborate on my thoughts about Cinnamon, the proper approach probably should have been to develop a new DE and just use Ubuntu wholesale as the base. This is what the KDE Neon team did. Neon is basically just Ubuntu but a "distro" made by the KDE team as the KDE utopia. I personally see the Mint team as DE developers more than OS developers, and I think that if they had gone that route they could dedicate more time to making Cinnamon awesome without having to worry about all the other crap that goes along with maintaining a full distro. The problem with this kind of forking is it results in a total loss of focus due to feature creep.

Mint forked Ubuntu long before Unity came around. 4 years before Unity in fact. Unity hit in 2010. Mint was first released in 2006. Cinnamon wasn't even a DE for Mint until 2012. Mint even used the same DE as Ubuntu for the longest time. So Mint was not forked because "they didn't like the default DE". Even Mint's founder has said that he forked it because he wanted to make Ubuntu "more elegant". Basically he had an ego and wanted a nicer theme. In my opinion instead of just making a better theme and sending it back upstream he forked Ubuntu to stroke his own ego. The creation of Cinnamon was indeed a side effect of Unity becoming the default DE in Ubuntu but it was also a side effect of Gnome 3 being such a radical change from Gnome 2. So Gnome 2 was forked and Cinnamon was born.

Solus is nothing like Ubuntu or Ubuntu derivatives. They didn't want to be a fork of a fork. They built from the ground up. They are very different from what Mint/Zorin/Elementary and others did with Ubuntu. If anything distros like Solus are a bigger benefit to the Linux community than another Ubuntu fork as Solus actually brings something new to the Linux community. Solus also has a great philosophy about it's code. They want stuff to be pushed back upstream. They don't want to patch their stuff and upstream be damned.

If you want to bring a DE to Solus here's what they expect:
 
Mint forked Ubuntu long before Unity came around. 4 years before Unity in fact. Unity hit in 2010. Mint was first released in 2006. Cinnamon wasn't even a DE for Mint until 2012. Mint even used the same DE as Ubuntu for the longest time. So Mint was not forked because "they didn't like the default DE". Even Mint's founder has said that he forked it because he wanted to make Ubuntu "more elegant". Basically he had an ego and wanted a nicer theme. In my opinion instead of just making a better theme and sending it back upstream he forked Ubuntu to stroke his own ego. The creation of Cinnamon was indeed a side effect of Unity becoming the default DE in Ubuntu but it was also a side effect of Gnome 3 being such a radical change from Gnome 2. So Gnome 2 was forked and Cinnamon was born.

I wouldn't say he had an ego, he just had a vision of what he thought Ubuntu should be.

That's the thing with open source, if you don't like something, you can change it to suit your needs, once you do this you create a fork, sometimes those forks become distro's. You can't stop it, it's the way it will always be.

I personally stick to Ubuntu MATE and I've never had a single issue. In my opinion one of the most polished packaged distro's out there.
 
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So after looking that the issue with the Cinnamon DE for Snowdog yesterday I started poking around other "big" distros just to see and play with them a bit since I had the laptop available to me while at work.

I was generally interested to see if the issue with Cinnamon was a more common issue than not. So I figured what the hell. I have the ability to do it.

So what I did was grab a few from the top 15 in the page hit list on distrowatch. I ignored the "normal" ones like Debian/Fedora/openSUSE/CentOS etc. I also skipped Ubuntu (and it's DE variations) itself with the exception of Kubuntu since I was comparing that to KDE Neon yesterday for the other thread yesterday.

Here's what I've loaded so far:

Mint Cinnamon
Mint MATE
KDE Neon
Kubuntu
elementary
Antergos

Deepin was left off because it wanted 2 days to download.
Zorin and Manjaro unfortunately were left off because SourceForge is blocked here at the office for some stupid reason. I'll grab those tonight at home and possibly give those a shot tomorrow.

And of course I use heavily Arch itself and Solus.

Look at that list though. Ubuntu is the common thing. Almost every one of them is a fork of Ubuntu which is a fork of Debian. So most are a fork of a fork. All with their own default DEs. Some of those DEs are a horrible experience.

I'm not saying creating another distro is a bad thing. It's not. But if you create a distro make it worthwhile. Here's what I've found with each distro so far. I'm also fully aware that I'm giving most of these distros just a small time for actual use but I used Xubuntu for a long time before I moved to Arch. So I know Ubuntu pretty well which means most of what I'm dealing with right now is nothing but different DEs and the user interface. So I don't need a whole lot of time to get a feel for the distro.

Mint Cinnamon - Cinnamon with Muffin is garbage. Period. Their fork of Mutter call Muffin is horrible. Why fork Mutter? Why!? And on top of it you can't change the compositor. Not OK. I really don't understand how this version of Mint can be so popular with the glaring DE issues. It would drive me bat-shit crazy.

Mint MATE - quite nice once you change to compton or compiz for compositing. However, what does Mint MATE bring to the table compared to Ubuntu MATE? That would be not a damn thing really outside of Mint being only LTS based. So this one really does fall under...why does this exist?

KDE Neon - Actually quite nice. Plasma 5.10 is fast, fluid and very nice looking. It's Ubuntu with rolling releases of KDE. I actually like this one after using it. KDE isn't my thing but if I had use a KDE based system Neon would have some consideration. Oh who am I kidding...I'd just use Arch and KDE. :p

Kubuntu - It's Plasma 5.9.3. It's fast and fluid. It's Ubuntu running KDE. Not much different than KDE Neon other than being a slightly older version of Plasma.

elementary - I had high hopes for this one as a lot of people like it. It's been nothing but a pain in the ass. The touchpad doesn't work right. Every other Ubuntu based distro works just fine but this one is jerky and the cursor jumps all over the screen especially when two finger scrolling. They broke Ubuntu. I don't even know how you do that. Pantheon isn't a bad DE. It's nice looking and it's fluid. I hate it though as I hate the macOS look. I also have to ask did they really have to fork Mutter and chunks of the Gnome stack? Who knows but at least theirs works and is still nice and smooth unlike Cinnamon.

Antergos - Arch for the newbie user. The installer is wonderful. The options? So much better than any other installer out there. I chose MATE at my DE during the install. Then they give you options for your browser choice (Chromium or Firefox). They give you the option for installing UFW and GUFW comes with that. It's a very nice experience. It's Arch for a beginner. The only issue I found is that there is no good compositor included by default. So while I didn't have any tearing it was a little jerky until I install Compton. It's also interesting to see the difference between MATE here and MATE on Mint. Just little things like the desktop-settings piece isn't in Antergos. Meaning that nice chunk of code probably didn't make it back up the mainline into MATE itself. I haven't verified that though. Overall Antergos is a fork of a distro that truly aims at a target and hits the mark. Antergos wanted to make installing Arch easy in order to bring it to the masses. They did it wonderfully.

Arch - It's Arch. It's whatever you want it to be. Yes, it requires more work and requires the user to actually learn something for a change but the sky is the limit and you can change DEs all you want. :)

Solus - A distro built from the ground up and not just another Ubuntu derivative. If I can't have Arch I'll take Solus. Fast, fluid, and an original DE (Budgie) to top it off. Best part about Budgie is that is built on the Gnome stack (just like Pantheon) but they didn't fork anything. So it just friggin works and works really well. LTS kernel as well and with the recent edition of clr-boot-manager they're looking into also giving users the option to install supported mainstream kernels. Solus is doing things differently. They're making themselves appeal to the masses because they aren't just another Ubuntu fork.

Again I'm not trying to make it sound like more distros are a bad thing. I guess I'm just tired of seeing more and more forks of Ubuntu with a forked DE with a few changes from the original and a theme. It's starting to look at the Android custom ROM section of a Nexus device on XDA. Any day now I'm expecting to see a thread somewhere called "My t0t4lly b1ch1n L1nux d1str0". It'll be Ubuntu with XFCE, Compton and some new theme that looks like Windows.

Seriously though the forking needs to stop unless it really needs to be done. A lot of it feels like stuff is being forked just to fork it. Forks like that mean improvements probably don't go but up the mainline. That's not good. You also have the forks that totally fuck up the original. *cough* *muffin* *cough* Pantheon forked Mutter but at least that one still works. It's still a smooth and fluid interface.

So there you have it. Flame away! :D

Your post is a perfect example of why there should be maybe only 3 main distros. It would greatly simplify things and make things just work far more often without having to putz around. I will give Solus a try in a Virtual Box VM, looking forward to it. :) Unbuntu works very fast in a VB VM so this should as well.

Edit: What I mean by Putz is having the manufacturers having to support multiple things and as a consequence, end up diluting their efforts.
 
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The problem with linux is that arch is not a distro for the windows masses. The vast majority of computer users are not intelligent enough to set up arch. What linux needs is a windows of linux. A dumbed down experience.
Isn't that ChromeOS ?
 
Your post is a perfect example of why there should be maybe only 3 main distros. It would greatly simplify things and make things just work far more often without having to putz around. I will give Solus a try in a Virtual Box VM, looking forward to it. :) Unbuntu works very fast in a VB VM so this should as well.

Edit: What I mean by Putz is having the manufacturers having to support multiple things and as a consequence, end up diluting their efforts.

I totally disagree. I think one of the big strengths of Linux is the diversity. The problem is that diversity is a double edged sword. So people need to really think about what they're going to do before they fork. The forking of something just to fork it is damn dumb.

That double edge sword can be seen in things like Mint MATE and Ubuntu MATE. I've said this already in the thread as well. I question the need for Mint MATE when everything underneath Mint MATE is Ubuntu MATE. They are nearly identical in the grand scheme. However, Solus MATE is completely different as it isn't Ubuntu underneath. That's a good thing. I find Solus to be far better than Ubuntu. YMMV but I'd load up Solus before I ever looked at Ubuntu or a derivative of it.

I would like to see less forks of forks of forks and shit unless they actually do something different. Look at Manjaro and Antergos. Arch based distros that make it far easier to setup. Manjaro gives you a simple install and running system with a nicely themed XFCE DE so that it just works. Antergos gives you more options during install so you get to do things like decide which DE you want to run. Those are good versions of basing a distro off another. They actually aim to do something specific and they do it well. They also don't try to do anything else.

However, look at the Ubuntu triple forked Feren OS. A themed version of Mint Cinnamon with WINE and things like Steam and PlayonLinux already installed. Woo? Stuff you can easily do in Ubuntu itself. In the article from the Feren OS thread they are looking at forking Cinnamon. WHY? OMG WHY!? Just improve Cinnamon and send the code back upstream. That's just beyond ridiculous.
 
There are differences between Ubuntu MATE and Mint MATE, furthermore both are very polished distro's straight out of the box that just work.

- Mint MATE is based on Ubuntu latest release, Ubuntu MATE is based on LTS.
- The layout of both DE's is completely different, Mint MATE is designed to appeal to newer, transitioning Windows users, Ubuntu MATE is designed to appeal to long term Ubuntu users that prefered the Gnome 2 styling of Ubuntu. Small differences, but important to many. Yes, you can tweak one to look like the other, but many just can't be arsed and just want an 'out of the box' experience.
- I find the settings under Ubuntu MATE to be vastly improved over Mint MATE, the settings panel under Ubuntu MATE allows for far more tweak ability compared to Mint MATE. Trackpad settings for one are vastly improved under Ubuntu MATE.

If you don't like Mint MATE, don't use it? You can't stop forking, doing so goes against what open source is about.
 
The deal with forks and "why don't they send things upstream?" is that sometimes upstream doesn't accept your changes. Collaboration is great, but if your grand idea disagrees with where the core projects wants to go, then you'll have to decide if you want to give up, fork a project, or just release some half-assed patching script to graft onto the parent project.

I wasn't paying close attention to distro politics at the time, but I've heard that's exactly what caused Unity to be born in the first place was the lack of the Gnome team's acceptance of Cannonical's direction suggestions. So, off they forked and went.
 
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