Alternative GUI

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Hey All,

I’m considering moving from CentOS 6 to CentOS 7. I’m not interested in dealing with Gnome 3. I’ve heard good things about Mate, a fork of Gnome 2. it appears that Mate is available in the EPEL repository associated with CentOS 7.

Have any of you tried Mate on CentOS 7? In your experienced opinion what would I be giving up by abandoning Gnome 3 and installing Mate instead?


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^ ^ Mark LaPierre Registered Linux user No #267004
https://linuxcounter.net/
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20 thoughts on - Alternative GUI

  • I’m using Mate on several C7 systems. The only issue is that now I
    dont have to try to use that horrid Gnome thing they’ve inflicted on us! :)

  • I also run MATE on CentOS 7, for the same reasons.

    Only additional thing I did was to install the “nux” repo, along with the infinality font rpms, which drastically improved font rendering.
    For some reason, the default C7 desktop never looked as good as the default C6 desktop until I installed:

    fontconfig-infinality-1-20120615_1.noarch freetype-infinality-2.4.12-2.20130514_01.el7.nux.1.x86_64

    -Greg

  • Same here however with the my latest system build I set one account up to use GNOME 3 and it definitely has considerably improved since when CentOS 7 first shipped.

    MATE is still better IMHO but I now have some hope for GNOME 3.

    Still feels like it is trying to be a tablet OS but not quite as much.

    I still couldn’t figure out how to do things like get green text on black background in the Terminal (easy in Mate) or get the Applications menu with submenus – but it was easier to use than what initially shipped.

  • Yupp, I have. First thing I did after C7-installation was to install the complete Mate-shebang. FWIW, I installed Ubuntu-Mate on my backup-laptop.

    You’re giving up a lot of grief and irritation when not finding stuff you’ve used for like ten years and having to relearn yet other things. It’s just not worth the hassle IMO.

    I’m yet to miss anything Gnome 3 has to offer. Gnome 3 might be good for some people, for others like me it’s just a waste of time relearning stuff that worked just fine before Gnome 3.

  • Thanks for the hint!

    Is there however something fishy with the freetype-infinality-2.4.12-2.20130514_01.el7.nux.1.x86_64?
    It seems it cannot be found in the nux-dextop repo.

  • Il 30/Set/2016 11:11, “Sorin Srbu” ha scritto:

    Do you mean with freetype-freeworld or infinality?

  • Infinality.

    It might be one of those imagination things. When I looked this morning I didn’t see any Wow!-difference I did last week.

  • You know, after I posted the original question I thought, Oh No! I’ve just started a flame war, but I’m glad to see that was not the case. It appears that everyone who responded is in general agreement on the subject. Greg Bailey even came up with a helpful hint on improving the font rendering on the desktop.

    Thank you all for your input.


    _
    °v°
    /(_)\
    ^ ^ Mark LaPierre Registered Linux user No #267004
    https://linuxcounter.net/
    ****

  • I looked at Mate Desktop for a CentOS 7 and recall having a problem:
    Disk Utility was not avail. I find Disk Utility very handy for managing RAID.

    Does anyone know if the good ole Gnome 3 Disk Utility has a Mate equivalent?

    thanks frank

  • I have it on my C7-box. It’s called “Disks” and is in the menu Applications – Utilities.

  • yes, I have that too, and it works. But I don’t know if it is a Mate utility, or a Gnome utility. it isn’t obvious to me.

    doing “yum list installed” shows a couple of items that it could be, but I don’t see anything named “disks” or including “disk” that also has the word Mate in its package name, so it may be from Gnome, or elsewhere.

    Fred

  • (Please don’t top-post.)

    You can use GNOME Disk Utility (package gnome-disk-utility) within a MATE session. It integrates quite nicely.

  • You can load it from the command line as gnome-disks.

    Since it works fine under Mate, at least for me, there’s no reason not to use it.

    I use it for formatting flash drives.

  • Mark LaPierre kirjoitti 29.9.2016 2:25:

    Hm I use Ubuntu Gnome with Gnome 3 for my desktop. I use CentOS 7 for my servers yes, but somehow I like Ubuntu Gnome with Gnome 3 for desktop.

    Glad that we have options…