You know I've never been that keen on Ubuntu, but if Stephen Fry uses it then it can't be that bad.

Ah, but has he got the Penguins ..

GNOME founder says 'desktop Linux is dead'.

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/08/g...-linux-is-dead

I suspect the Linux community will mostly respond with just one word.

"Steam".

GNOME's philosophy of locking down the desktop environment to have as little options and tinkering as possible probably didn't help matters either. It's why I stick with KDE.

Well lets just pack it in and go home then. I don't believe the Linux desktop is dead by a long shot, and I'm upset that the suggestion should come from a prominent Gnome fellow.

In other news, openSUSE 12.2 is finally out! It's been a while, but it's here and I'll probably give it a whirl. Grabbed the Gnome edition already, so hopefully I'll get a bit of time to have a play tonight.

I think it's more likely that the Gnome DE is dying with KDE and XFCE reaping the benefits.

I don't think the Gnome DE is dying at all personally. I think Gnome 3 has proved a massive culture shock for long term Linux users, and this has prompted a lot of ugly comments on various forums and Linux sites, but it's very unfair and often done by people who haven't even spent any time with it. To me Gnome 3 is a pretty amazing desktop that I personally have a lot of time for. I think it's sad that a lot of people have just dismissed it, when to me it is probably one of the most forward thinking desktops there is. I was a bit unsure about some of the changes to Nautilus I'd read about (removing items etc), but it turns out the claims there are unfounded too. In short, you can't believe anything you read about Gnome these days.

I like Gnome 3 (and Unity) too but I see a lot of negativity about it online (more than positivity) so I guess that's what I based my comment on.

I broke my Ubuntu installation with my tinkering and installed Xubuntu and I love it. XFCE really is a fantastic DE

I hate Gnome 3 because it's as intuitive as putting flat-pack furniture together

Linus Torvalds openly hates it.

Personally. I would rather use MATE, Unity or Cinnamon.

Well I don't much care whether Linus Torvalds likes it or not. I've spent my own time with it and gathered enough thoughts of my own on it to base an opinion on. I'm lucky insofar as I'm quite happy (more than happy as it happens) to use all the Linux DE's. They all offer something unique and are really no trouble to use. I personally found Gnome 3 incredibly intuitive to use.

Ubuntu 12.10 beta 1 is out. Downloading now.

I'm thinking of switching to Linux Mint but am still sitting on the fence.

I also don't care whether or not Torvalds likes it, it was just to back up my argument

Well I can tell you that Mint 13 with Cinnamon has been really amazing for me. I have read of some people having issues with it on occasion, but I have had nary a glitch or a bug to spoil it.

To me, though it has the basics of the everyday desktop environment you're used to, it is forward thinking enough to have lots of great features you'd expect to see in Shell, KDE or Unity. I'm not someone who is typically against Unity or Shell (as you may have gathered!), and am not especially seeking a Gnome 2 replacement, but Cinnamon has won me over with its cool easy-going nature, and modern look. I only hope the Mint team can keep on top of such a fork, especially now that they've also forked Nautilus.

Thanks for the reply

Will download it later...

Have you tried the MATE desktop environment? I would imagine it is just Gnome 2x with enhancements, bug fixes etc...

I have always found putting flat pack furniture together very easy

Well me too funnily enough!

Just tried the Ubuntu beta, but sadly something is wrong with it. All I'm getting is a garbled messy screen and no desktop, and the whole thing just locks up leaving you having to hard shutdown. Bit of a mess then. There's some reports of this on their forums, and some suggest using nomodeset at boot, but I don't see the point messing about with that. It should "just work" really when a user wants to boot it. Telling newbies to add these options in at boot isn't going to win fans.

Hopefully they'll fix it for launch, and if not, I hope Mint can.

I have confidence that the major bugs will be sorted by the final release, betas are always going to have problems. I hope it was a virtual machine you installed it on so it didn't cause issues on your main machine

I didn't install it, just ran the USB stick live.

As you may or may not know, openSUSE 12.2 was released a couple of weeks ago. Feeling brave, and having spent a month with Linux Mint (a whole month!), I decided to give the Gnome edition a spin. I know, I know, you all say it's a KDE distro. Well you're wrong - they do both beautifully. Gnome on openSUSE is easily as nice or even better than the equivalent Fedora effort imho.

Anyway I won't ramble on, but so far I'm really loving it, and Gnome Shell, again. It's always been a little bit more of a manual distro; you find yourself having to tell it to do things that Mint or Ubuntu do without any prompting. But having said that it is still fully capable and I have to say so far very stable. Not a glitch or a hang has ailed me. They've really upped the branding too, which might not sound like much but it makes the whole thing feel very polished and ready for business. The Plymouth boot screen is seriously gorge, and now GRUB 2.0 has landed it features a very nice proper graphical menu.

So, it cuts the mustard visually, is a solid performer, and has oodles of style too. I like. Lots. And I'll stick with it for a bit.

I get the impression that Canonical woke up and smelt the coffee a while ago: the "app store" or whatever they call it is a very obvious addition with Unity. I'm guessing it will become even more "in-your-face"; I already found it obtrusive enough. With Apple/Android/Microsoft all making moves to dominate your "apps" from their "store", it could be an interesting play on their part, especially if Steam/Gaming-on-Linux really does come to fruition. Put Unity/Gnome on mobile devices (I realise this is why it's being simplified and made less configurable) and it could be a success.

On the desktop, on the other hand, just give me a "start menu", icons on the desktop if I so choose and the rest of what made Gnome 2 usable.

But unfortunately about as much fun as having teeth pulled. Which about sums up the Linux experience for most people.

Hey, useful comment!

OK, so I don't know if anyone can help with this here. The missus has just bought a Samsung 355V5C laptop on offer from Amazon. It seems pretty neat, but she wants Linux on it and I cannot find the option to boot from USB in the BIOS. There's the boot device priority list, but it only has options for the HDD and the DVD drive. No USB option is listed. I read elsewhere that disabling something called Fast BIOS fixes it, but I've done this and it doesn't work.

Any ideas appreciated. Other than just burn a disc.

Try using PLoP Boot Manager. Although never used myself as I have never had a problem changing the boot order to USB I understand there are some machines that can be tricky. PLOP apparently gets around the problem
see instructions at the following link
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16822...-wont-let-you/

Tried the other USB sockets? I think it was an EEE I had which would only boot from one skt.

Thanks for your replies guys. I only tried one USB, so I'll try another. Failing that, it's PLOP for me.

Hi Kal-EI
Just burn the dam disk, you could have had it runnung by now
Ive tried all formats of Gnome but still cant take to it, will be sticking with my XFCE

But am tempted to try this
http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/?p=207
But without ATI Drivers as they dont seem like my setup
But luckily the non proprietary work a treat

Ps still think that Mint default Firefox icon looks awfull