娲诲姩宸茬粨鏉58cv网址导航The Strange Adventure Of James ShervintonLinux Mint: The new Ubuntu?By
on November 11, 2011 at 10:28 amShare This articleIn the Linux world, a war has been raging for a couple years. At stake are the hearts and minds of its user base, the combatants the various distributions of Linux itself. For some time, Ubuntu Linux has been the clear leader in the fight, amassing more users than any other. Canonical and its baby seemed poised to take over the desktop Linux market completely. That is, , first as an option in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat, and then the default going forward. In the harsh world of desktop operating systems, often how you stand out from the crowd is how you stay ahead. Unity definitely stood out, alright.Unity has caused an uproar in the Linux community. What’s worse, by all appearances it has caused a defection of users in droves to distros like Linux Mint, now the second most popular Debian-based distribution out there and gaining fast on Ubuntu. If you follow my Linux travels, back in September I talked a bit about . The article had well over 100 comments, most lambasting Unity and Canonical’s choice to force it upon its users.So, what’s happened in two months? In a word: Unity. I stated back in September that I had the feeling that Unity on the desktop was causing me to be a more lazy user as far as Linux was concerned, and I was right. Ubuntu took away most of the customization controls Linux users h one of the main reasons to use Linux at all over Microsoft or Apple. I was clicking where I wasn’t used to clicking, and finding myself using the search functionality over shortcuts, which added steps and interrupted the flow of working. To me an operating system something that gets out of your way so you can do what you’re supposed to be doing. Unity’s new interface seemed that way at first, but once the novelty wore off I could felt the time sink casual usage had become and how it affected my work.The desktop seems crowded, and yet on a large monitor there’s so much real estate to get to that left menu that it’ multi-monitor just never felt right either. To make matters worse, Canonical seemed to ignore all protest, which made users feel alienated and not cared about.Still, though, as a matter of taste, many do like Unity and feel it’s an improvement over the Gnome shell Ubuntu used previously. New user especially seem taken with it, or users that aren’t what one would consider “power users.” I began to think that perhaps the complaints were from set-in-their way power users and didn’t conform to a large cross-section of users. Unity was what Canonical’s users wanted, they kept saying. Who was I to say otherwise, one user with a couple of hardcore Linux friends that felt the same.But then came Canonical’s press release about .Suddenly it all clicked: Unity was the beta of a touch interface. In that form factor, it will probably work wonderfully. But I can’t help but feel like Canonical misled its users. Unity isn’ it’s a way for Ubuntu to branch into what’s hot — the mobile market. Business-wise, it’s a secure move. As a user, though, I fooled. Disappointed.But now in sweeps Linux Mint. It’s running Gnome 2 (and Mint 12 will be running Gnome 3, but be completely compatible with Gnome 2 for those that don’t want to make the switch), it uses the same commands and runs most apps the same as U in short, it’s Ubuntu without someone else telling you what to do or taking the OS into a direction that you’re unwilling to follow. Ubuntu One works with Mint, and best of all, you can customize it to look, feel, and run exactly how you want it.Which, for most users of Linux, is exactly what they want.
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