Finally they are revamping the addon repository...
Would be nice if they also bring back the customizable menu.
theoretically the want to update all previously existing extensions, desklets and so on...I guess it will take some time though.
Lol. This is the last thing mint should concern themselves with.
I think mint needs a new coat of paint. The UI was very modern and well put together several years ago, but plasma 5 really showed us just how far we could push a DE.
Even though plasma looks great Mint is not trying to push the envelope on DE design. It just tries to provide an elegant traditional start menu DE with modern features...I do not think it needs any coat of paint. Cinnamon and Mate (as they are the defaults for Mint) are exactly how they are supposed to be and have great functionality.
What they need to focus on is security and code curation and I like seeing them doing things on that direction.
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Geez, I might as well be using gnome3.
I totally agree. But the context of this post is about cinnamon spices which do correspond to UI. My point is that rather than screwing around with extensions and applets, they should just simply update the UI as a whole.
Cut out the middle man.
I also have an issue when developers take such a simple mind set to developing UI. I can appreciate that they want to keep things simple. But there is a difference between simplicity and keeping up with the times.
I am not asking them to turn mint into windows 10 or implement some crazy new feature. I would simply like to see better rendering and better placed UI elements.
The start menu could really be trimmed down a bit, and it would be nice if it used some different icons than the gnome 2 menu stuff.
I also think they should ship the minty theme by default. Or some other really popular theme. The default theme makes my eye twitch.
The absolute most I would ever ask of them would be to condense the utility tray into a popup menu. They could either do it like gnome 3 does it with the aggregate menu, or the way budgie does it with the raven menu. Either way, I think the utility tray can get real ugly real fast and it needs some thought.
These features are installed by default...18 already has some great pre installed themes like mint-y. You cannot call the DE problematic in features just because the 3rd party theme you like is not included. Plus downloading/installing it is integrated on the theme settings...
For that i agree...
That being said i do not think that cinnamon is anachronistic. On the contrary it is one of the most elegant UI out there...Not very customizable but feature full nontheless. Plus it comes bundled with nemo which I also think that is one of the best file managers in terms of features.
Also if you really want the DE to expand you need community support (unless you have millions to invest on design). Not cutting the middle man is a great way to expand with limited resources. You just need competent curation.
I do think that Cinnamon definitelly has some potential.
It just needs more feutures and customization,
and sometimes certain themes dont allways work well consistantly.
You misunderstood me with the first part.
What I was getting at is that the default theme is dated in general and could use a different color scheme than simple flat grey. Minty was just an example that most people know about.
And I am certainly not mad, I just think its silly to refurbish the conduit to improve the system, when you could just improve the system directly and worry about conduit later.
As for your second point, I agree that you need community support, but I feel like there is probably more to that point that meets the eye.
Mint has a massive community and I find it very odd how little the distro has grown in the past couple of years.
IDK enough about mint to speculate, but I would not be surprised if they try to keep development in house.
From 18 there are 3-4 default schemes including a dark Mint-Y which is great. Just because it is not the default activated it does not mean it is not there. The issue is that what you see as dated is the purpose of the UI itself. People want a simple traditional UI just like the Mate crowd want a very customizable traditional gnome2-like DE. the crowd that uses Cinnamon do not want it to become plasma.
They have been already doing it for a while now...Mint was largely a one man show (maybe two-ish). And that created issues. Now with the security attacks and the realization that there is too much workload to do only in-house I think they are trying to open up development more.
Ugh....Mate people....shudders
And I am not all that certain that people don't want cinnamon to follow in KDE's foot steps. Remember that cinnamon used to be THE pretty and polished desktop.
IMO, cinnamon's strength is that it is similar to KDE but it uses half the ram and it uses some client side decorations to make the desktop seem more cohesive.
Yeahhhhh....IDK what is going on over on the mint team.
I also don't understand the point of this spices repo to begin with. It looks to me like the mint people are hosting and maintaining this repo?
As far as I can tell, the extensions were ported over by their original creators on the gnome side, sooooooo why is mint trying to take over maintenance. Seems like more unnecessary work.
Curation...the apps/extensions etc are still develped by the 3rd party creators but hey are curated and supported by the mint guys for the spices to be always compatible with any new cinanmon versions before the new version is out on the actual OSs. Also for security reasons and code quality curation and so on...Basically that consistency @MisteryAngel refered to.
It is actually very typical stuff in community development. It is not that they are doing anything novel. Just what they should have done a long time ago.
It still is...I have not seen anyone in the community having any complains about that...Especially with the dark theming from 18 and on.
Cinnamon strength is its simplicity that is also not that bad to look at...
KDE strength is the endless customization and innovating concepts. These can be really opposite goals. KDE users do not care about familiarity...They take the time to make the DE exactly as they want to. Cinnamon users do not want that. They just want out-of-the-box good aesthetics.