Mint 12 RC update

Linux Mint 12

Many bugs were fixed in preparation for the final release:

• apturl is now fully functional
• adding PPA repositories was fixed
• MATE received a critical update to mate-session-manager (this bug prevented MATE to be started from the login screen for i386 users)
• mintMenu was ported to MATE
• packages now open with gdebi
• mgse-menu received keyboard navigation and multiple bug fixes
• mgse-windowlist was given a brand new look and now looks extremely similar to the Gnome 2 window list
• mgse-bottompanel now makes it possible to switch between workspaces using the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+Alt+Arrow keys
• Mint-Z now features silver-looking bottom panels, menu and window list which look similar to Mint 11, as well as a new theme called Mint-Z-Dark which features black components and looks like an improvement of the MGSE desktop from the RC release.
• The ability to open directories as root was added to Gnome 3

The feedback we got from the RC wasn’t as straight forward as it usually is. As expected, the introduction of Gnome 3 is dividing the Mint community. We were delighted to see that MGSE was well received and that it helped people migrating to Gnome 3. MGSE received a lot of noticeable improvements since and the final release of Linux Mint 12 will come with a Gnome 3 experience that is significantly better than in the RC release.
I personally understand the fact that some Gnome 2 users are extremely concerned. Whether it’s Gnome 3 or MATE, these technologies are recent and they’re not as mature as Gnome 2. It’s important to understand that they represent our future though, and that sticking to Gnome 2 would make the situation in terms of packages and runtime conflicts with both Gnome 3 and Ubuntu completely unmanageable. In other words, if we were to stick to Gnome 2.32, Linux Mint would no longer be compatible with Ubuntu and you would not be able to run Gnome 3 in Linux Mint. We were one of the last distributions to support Gnome 2, we’re amongst the very few to support MATE and we’re innovating on Gnome 3 to ease this transition and make people feel at home on this new desktop. With Linux Mint 12 we’re giving Mint users the option to try MATE and to migrate to Gnome 3/MGSE. Though it might be considered a step backwards, these two desktops will improve rapidly and this is a process which needs to be done at some stage. Previous releases of Linux Mint are still available to users who prefer Gnome 2 of course, and by the time they become obsolete, both MATE and Gnome 3/MGSE will have matured, MATE into an ever-closer incarnation of Gnome 2, and Gnome3/MGSE into a brand new implementation of the vision we have for the Linux Mint desktop.