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posted by martyb on Friday May 31 2019, @02:30AM   Printer-friendly
from the wintergreen-or-peppermint dept.

Cinnamon, the popular desktop environment featured in Linux Mint, makes more sense as a distribution-agnostic package.

[...] Since time immemorial—or, more likely, the late 1990s—the intractable problem of “fragmentation of the Linux desktop” has been debated on the internet. While some contend that the wide variety of competing distributions offers more choice to users, that choice can also be overwhelming—making it too difficult for new users to decide on a distribution, or leading them to choose a distribution that is poorly-built or unsupported, providing a bad first experience.

While these arguments have merit, they ignore a critical problem: The infrastructure and developer attention needed to maintain a distribution is extensive, and difficult to justify. Long-running Linux distributions have stopped operations due to a lack of resources, and it is time for Linux Mint to consider doing the same in order to prevent developer burnout, while transitioning Cinnamon into being a fully platform-agnostic desktop environment.

[...] CERN withdrew from Scientific Linux in 2015, beginning a migration to CentOS, with Fermilab announcing their own migration to CentOS 8 as part of the transition from their own distribution.

[...] Likewise, the Arch-based Antergos distribution announced plans to shut down, as the developers "no longer have enough free time to properly maintain Antergos," and that "continuing to neglect the project would be a huge disservice to the community."

[...] Ultimately, the benefit of Cinnamon can be realized as a truly distribution-agnostic desktop environment. Most of the work is already done: Fedora already has a Cinnamon spin, and can be installed in Debian, OpenSuSE, and Arch (among others). Transitioning Linux Mint development efforts to make Cinnamon an Ubuntu Flavor—adhering more tightly to Ubuntu's infrastructure and release timelines, rather than operating independently and running the risk causing package conflicts—would deduplicate a great deal of work, providing more time to further improve Cinnamon, and ease the strained schedules of Clem and other Linux Mint contributors.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/scientific-linux-and-antergos-are-shutting-down-its-time-for-linux-mint-to-go/


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Nuke on Friday May 31 2019, @09:13AM (2 children)

    by Nuke (3162) on Friday May 31 2019, @09:13AM (#849713)

    Imagine if Stanley decided to redesign the hammer every three years.

    Thought they did. I have several hammers that have been handed down from my grandfather, and I expect he originally bought them from a junk shop - they never wear out. They look nothing like a new Stanley hammer with its fancy "ergonomic" shape and brightly coloured plastic inlays.

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 31 2019, @04:18PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 31 2019, @04:18PM (#849852)

    OT, but since you mentioned hammers...

    Before hand work was replaced with machine work, there were specialized hammers for many trades. I have a bottom drawer in my toolchest full of interesting old hammers. Some from my grandfather's mill, he owned a small wood shop that made axe and hammer handles in small town Maine (hundreds of different patterns of handle). Others have randomly appeared with little effort, friends clearing out parents basements, etc. Once I saw an old hammer catalog (online somewhere) which was an eye-opener, my little collection (maybe 25-30 hammers) is nothing compared to the variety once available.

    One of my favorites is the "engineers hammer" -- a 3 or 4 pound sledge with short handle, useful for persuading... A quick image search shows many different patterns of this general category.

  • (Score: 2) by Appalbarry on Sunday June 02 2019, @12:48AM

    by Appalbarry (66) on Sunday June 02 2019, @12:48AM (#850351) Journal

    I'm partial to an Estwing framing hammer. My point though is that one framing hammer looks and feels like another, and doesn't require a learning curve if you change brands. And, more specifically, a 2019 Estwing hammer won't have been radically redesigned compared to the 2005 model.

    Unlike Windows, or Android.