On Tuesday 08 November 2011 22:07:30 Pascal Bleser wrote:

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Linux Mint developers claim 40% increase in user base in just one month due to Gnome 2 they provide in Linux Mint.

In a blog post, anyone can claim anything :)

Well this is their official blog.

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=== In Linux Mint 11 we made the decision to keep Gnome 2.32. The traditional Gnome desktop, although it’s not actively developed by the Gnome development team anymore, is still by far the most popular desktop within the Linux community. As other distributions adopted new desktops such as Unity and Gnome 3, many users felt alienated and consequently migrated to Linux Mint. We recorded a 40% increase in a single month and we’re now quickly catching up with Ubuntu for the number #1 spot within the Linux desktop market. === http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1851

In Linux Mint 12 they include the Gnome2' s fork, Mate desktop as well as a set of plugins for Gnome Shell that reverses some changes made in the user interface by Gnome3 team, known as LMDE (Linux Mint Desktop Extensions). The taskbar, main menu, multi-window interface will be back again.

Let's see what their position will be on distrowatch when the security issues arise because there are only a handful people who support the fork (at least, I would presume it's not anywhere near as many developers as with Gnome 3).

I doubt security issues with Gnome 2 will somehow affect popularity with home users. Also I doubt the issues will be higher than say with LXDE or any other desktop. What people see are the crashes, instability, visual artefacts, of which Unity and Gnome 3 are full so far (and which impacts security as well - how can you feel secure on a system which frequently crashes?).

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The recent statistics from DistroWatch shows that recent days Mint got more than twice hits than Ubuntu http://distrowatch.com/index.php?dataspan=1 suggesting popular interest.

Indeed, "suggesting", as we all know that distrowatch is hardly an indicator of much (and I wouldn't pull the distrowatch card when openSUSE is on top either).

Linux Mint has means of measuring popularity other than distrowatch, especially given their main income is due the commercial relations with search providers. This makes volume of user base the most important factor for profitability. For example, they are now investigating the number of users who use Opera browser as a part of a program to capitalize their increased user base into commercial relations with search providers: http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1847

Well good for them, if that's the case, as it will only be temporary: - all the Gnome developers are on Gnome3 now - their fork will require a lot of manpower to fix security issues and bugs, not sure that many of the Gnome2 developers are in that team (I might be wrong though) - Gnome3 will eventually become more featureful and as stable as Gnome2

Given what recently people of Gnome (namely Jon McCann) said they do not welcome the extensions that make it look closer to Gnome2. On the other hand as I noted Linux Mint has its own set of Gnome Shell extensions which indeed return some concepts removed from Gnome3, such as multi-window interface, taskbar, main menu, window buttons etc. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+owner@opensuse.org

On Wednesday 09 November 2011 00:29:11 Kim Leyendecker wrote:

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I doubt security issues with Gnome 2 will somehow affect popularity with home users. Also I doubt the issues will be higher than say with LXDE or any other desktop.

What people see are the crashes, instability, visual artefacts, of which Unity and Gnome 3 are full so far (and which impacts security as well - how can you feel secure on a system which frequently crashes?).

And I doubt that such topics belong to a marketing-list.

And where do they belong then?

Sorry, we had have enough GNOME 2 threads in the past, I guess it´s enough.

This is not really thread about Gnome2 but about a new leader among Linux distributions in terms of user base and popularity and how it is possible to learn from their lessons.

About the GNOME 2 fork: Mint will ship it, maybe we´ve some volunteers who package it via OBS, then it would be easy to create a live CD with SUSE Studio and we could also ship our own version.

But please *stop* this discussions for now. If you really want to talk about GNOME 2, support the GNOME 2 fork.

Even if you find such volunteers (actually would be quite difficult given the easiness of changing to a distribution where all is already done), the moment will be gone already to make any earns from it. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+owner@opensuse.org

On Tuesday 08 November 2011 22:07:30 Pascal Bleser wrote:

Well good for them, if that's the case, as it will only be temporary:

They dramatically increase user base for now. I doubt the users who migrated to Mint today will ever return back to Ubuntu or Fedora even if Linux Mint stops shipping Mate eventually. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+owner@opensuse.org