Review: Pinguy OS 12.04 LTS

Main Screen + Cardapio Menu

A couple weeks ago, the latest version of Pinguy OS came out, and I wanted to try it. I haven't had the time until today, though, so that's why the review is happening today.

I previously reviewed Pinguy OS 11.10 and found that while there are certain things to which I may not be able to become fully accustomed, the "beta" label on Pinguy OS 11.10 seemed overly cautious considering its stability and high quality overall. The latest version has not changed much from that beta version besides having newer packages in general, but because version 11.10 was never truly official, the changes in version 12.04 LTS are of course huge compared to version 11.04. Also, accompanying the new release is a revamped website, which looks a lot cleaner and less bloated than before.

I probably would not normally seriously consider a distribution with GNOME 3/Shell for installation on my hard drive, but one of the things that caught my eye about this release was the option of using the Axe menu instead of the default Cardapio menu in the top panel. I did some searching and found out that the Axe menu looks and could potentially act almost identically to the Linux Mint Menu, which is amazing. That is why I am trying the 64-bit edition (as a live USB made with MultiSystem); sure, GNOME 3/Shell doesn't have my nice desktop cube, but it could potentially have everything else I could want, and given that, I'm OK with giving up the desktop cube if I am left with no other good alternatives. Follow the jump to see what this is like.

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Review: GNOME 3

Shell Main Screen

About 2 months ago, I previewed GNOME 3. At that time, it was many weeks away from the final release, so there were still many things to be done. Since then, many things have changed, and a few days ago, GNOME 3 was finally released for the whole world to see.

The biggest change in GNOME 3 is of course the GNOME 3 Shell. This has gotten several changes, updates, and other revisions through its development. Since then, however, a GNOME 3 fallback mode has also been added. One of the common complaints about GNOME 3 has been that the new Mutter WM requires 3D effects to work correctly, and not all computers have this, especially older ones. This is where GNOME 3 fallback mode comes in, so in addition to trying out GNOME 3 Shell, I have also tried GNOME 3 fallback mode.

Fallback Main Screen +
Calendar Applet +
User Profile Menu Applet

I did all this thanks to the efforts of the Fedora developers in building the latest live ISO image of GNOME 3; I made a live USB of it using UnetBootin. Follow the jump to see how much has changed in two months.

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Preview: GNOME 3

Main Screen + Calendar + Notification Area

Usually, when I review desktop environments, I review KDE, specifically version 4. Why? It's constantly evolving and improving, and it's nice to be able to see such changes occurring on all fronts so quickly. By contrast, GNOME and Xfce (not to mention other WMs like Openbox) have remained relatively the same over the past few releases. Sure, Nautilus got tabbed browsing in version 2.22 (I think) and split-pane viewing in version 2.30. Sure, there may have been a couple other back-end changes. But generally speaking, where KDE 4 has changed pretty noticeably between point releases, GNOME has been quite stable. That's all going to change, because GNOME is about to be released under a whole new number: 3. That's right: the number preceding the decimal point in a GNOME release will no longer be '2'.
There are some pretty big changes in store for GNOME 3, much of which can be seen in the front-end. Because many major distributions are planning to upgrade to GNOME 3 once that gets released (in a few weeks, apparently), it's important that users try GNOME 3 beforehand both to get accustomed to it as well as to find and report lingering bugs. Happily, the good people at Fedora and openSUSE have put together live CD ISO files with vanilla GNOME 3 on them, just for the purpose of trying out GNOME 3. I downloaded both files and intended to make a multiboot live setup using MultiSystem, but unfortunately MultiSystem reacted with error messages to both ISOs. Knowing that openSUSE doesn't play well with UnetBootin, I decided to just try out the Fedora version on a live USB through UnetBootin. Follow the jump to see how it goes.

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Featured Comments: Week of 2010 October 10

There were two posts from this past week that garnered comments.

GNOME 3, Activities, and KDE 4

The most common complaint about this post was that I should have read Aaron Seigo's post on the matter before writing this; unfortunately, it didn't happen that way. I'll get back to this point later. Let's continue with the comments themselves.
An anonymous reader points out, "You shouldn't worry about Compiz. Mutter will provide the desktop effects. If you really, really want Compiz integration with GNOME 3 you are out of luck. Don't ask me why but GNOME developers designed GNOME Shell to be a Mutter plug-in, so as you can see the former depends heavily on the latter, thus making impossible for Compiz developers to support GNOME Shell."
Another anonymous reader adds to this, "If I recall correctly I believe I once heard Compiz was never supposed to be permanent. It was an example of what the Windows managers (aka GNOME an KDE) could and perhaps should/should not do."
Reader twitter adds, "A lightweight desktop with modern features is E16. It has transparency and excellent 2D desktop management. E16's clear distintion between virtual screens and virtual desktops implemented the concept of "activities" more than a decade ago."
Commenter Eric Mesa adds to the previous anonymous reader's comment, "I was surprised to find out that Compiz still exists. Kwin, Fluxbox, and Metacity have all, to some degree, incorporated this. I know they aren't as flashy as compiz, but I think it's just a matter of time. Compiz was the fire under the butts of developers, showing them what X could do and daring them to match it. [...] I have to say that, in my experience, everyone who saw Compiz thought it was neat, but no one was converted because of compiz. They wanted to know if they could still do the work they did on their windows computers."
Finally, a certain anonymous reader (because I'm fairly sure it's the same reader who wrote all 3 of those comments)  complained about my analysis in 3 comments too long to repost here verbatim. I'll try to analyze it point by point.
First of all, my comparison wasn't especially apt only because I'm comparing my experiences with KDE 4.5 with other reviewers' experiences with both KDE 4.5 and GNOME 3. But let's continue from there.
I specifically state that KDE 4 Activities were unusable until KDE 4.5. Hence, KDE 4.5 Activities are quite usable and stable.
From the reviews I've read, GNOME 3 doesn't crash and is about as stable as GNOME 2.X. When KDE 4.0 was first brought into the pipeline, people were comparing its beta releases to KDE 3.5 and GNOME 2.X; why is it not fair to do the reverse now? Furthermore, GNOME Shell can be used in GNOME 2.X, so I would say that if it's made it into the repositories of distributions that use GNOME 2.X, it's certainly not a "future technology", even though it will see its first official implementation in GNOME 3.
What you (the anonymous commenter who wrote these comments) say about GNOME 3 already knowing what pitfalls to avoid is known as the second-mover advantage. It's the reason why in the battles of the jetliners in the 1940s and 1950s, the Boeing 707, which came after the De Havilland Comet, prevailed: the De Havilland Comet, while very sleek, had flaws that caused a number of fatal and spectacular accidents mostly due to the same issue, so Boeing was able to analyze this and build an airplane that did not suffer these issues. Is that really so bad? (Of course, unlike KDE with its Activities, De Havilland was loath to even admit there was a problem until after the occurrence of about 5 major accidents, after which point it was told to stop manufacturing altogether, without being given a chance to reassess its design and engineering and fix its mistakes.) Really, do you want to fly in the De Havilland Comet? No? So aren't you glad that GNOME 3 learned from KDE 4's mistakes?
Finally, with regard to Aaron Seigo's blog post, I think in his analysis, he's missing a key point: although GNOME 3 and KDE 4's Activities are implemented very differently, in that GNOME 3's Activities are a more formalized and structured implementation of virtual desktops, while KDE 4's Activities are collections of different applications, it's important to remember that if you think about it, both come from essentially the same core idea, and that is a way to group sets of applications in some manner. GNOME 3 requires the user to do it each time, while KDE 4 allows the user to do it once and then select from whatever Activities have been made. Part of the difference also comes from KDE 4's Plasmoids, for which there really isn't any GNOME 3 analogue; also, my comparison stems from the fact that although this certainly isn't the default behavior, many online writers recommend after installing KDE 4 that the user tie each virtual desktop to a different activity. Yes, KDE 4's Activities are a good bit different and a bit more advanced than Activities as implemented in GNOME 3, but it's hard to deny that they both come from the same basic idea.
I hope all this clears up my position on this debate.

Facebook's Worrying Privacy Changes

An anonymous reader writes, "Now you can use Facebook but still keep your messages private. And you don't have to depend on Facebook privacy settings. Just ‘CLOAK’ your messages with your own private keyword using the free CloakGuard browser plugin. This garbles your message and only the people you've shared your keyword with (and not Facebook) can read your messages."

Well, that wraps up the comments for this past week. Again, I hope I've made my position a little more clear. In addition, I will say once again that if you enjoy what I write, please do take a moment to subscribe via RSS or email!

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GNOME 3, Activites, and KDE 4

There have been a slew of new articles detailing the progress of work on GNOME 3, and the refrain in all of them has been that "GNOME 3 will revolutionize the desktop". The focus on GNOME 3, ever since the release of the first mock-ups, has been on the new GNOME Shell and GNOME Activities (which are really just two sides of the same coin). The thing is, GNOME Activities has essentially the same concept (and even the same name) as KDE 4 Activities. So I was thinking for quite a while: how can this be called "revolutionary" with a straight face? Today it hit me: while KDE may have had the idea first, GNOME presents a far superior execution of this idea; GNOME Activities in the alpha and beta versions of GNOME 3 was very usable and improved with each iteration, while KDE Activities remained very slow, very buggy, and nearly unusable until the release of KDE 4.5.
All this makes me rethink my previous position on GNOME 3. I previously believed that GNOME 3 would suffer the same fate as KDE 4, in that a lot of current GNOME users would migrate to other DEs upon seeing GNOME 3 (be it for its radical nature or its buggy nature). Now, however, I don't think this is the case. I think the major *nix DEs are finally falling into fairly well-defined niches. GNOME will emphasize simplicity, ease-of-use, and understated modernity over flashiness and over-the-top effects. KDE will be the way forward for ultimate customization, web-connected computing through Plasmoid widgets, and flashy desktop effects (as well as tools for power-users, like Dolphin/Konqueror vs. Nautilus, Okular vs. Evince, Kate vs. Gedit, etc.). (Xfce and LXDE will, of course, remain the DEs of choice for people who need lower-resource but still fully-functional and modern DEs.)
But with GNOME moving towards a more tightly-integrated and powerful Metacity WM, one WM is still left out in all this: Compiz. Unfortunately, Compiz and its desktop effects still don't work in recent builds of GNOME 3. While Compiz integration with KDE has gotten better, it still isn't seamless, and Kwin is almost there (but not quite). While most everyday Linux users don't use most Compiz effects (except maybe window decoration transparency and minimize/maximize effects), these effects often play a role in convincing non-Linux users to try Linux. There have been stories after stories of people just using their Linux computers with their friends and their friends being awed and intrigued by the desktop cube and the wobbly windows; don't underestimate the power of these effects to convince people (in the implicit form of "can your OS do this?"). So what does all this mean? It'll become a lot harder to convince people to use Linux through this route, as there will be many people put off by the confusing and endless customization options of KDE 4 (or simply can't run it because they have lower-end hardware). So, GNOME 3 developers, can we please get Compiz integration with GNOME 3 before the first official release? Thanks!

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