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If you mean 'come back gnome2' then mate 1.4 was released yesterday
http://mate-desktop.org/2012/07/30/mate-1-4-released/
You can get packages
http://mate-desktop.org/install/
Personally I have always preferred KDE (with the exception of 4.0 -> 4.2)
Yeah Vista made me do that back in 2009, haven't used Windows since.
Head over to /r/unixporn if you haven't already, good place to find out what DE you might like.
I like the simpleness of Mate with the Faenza Icon set.
Linux Mint has been my go-to distro for a couple of years now and it's the one I recommend to people just starting out or those who just want something straightforward. It also seems to be the best Mate release out there but I haven't tried Ubuntu or Fedoras spin in awhile so maybe they have improved.
Take little steps.
You've picked Mint Mate. You already know how to change wallpaper, probably... :)
Mate comes with two Window Managers, Marco and Compiz. This is the program that draws the main program bars with the close/minimise buttons.
Marco has a few themes installed already, and if you go into the settings menu for the desktop, you'll be able to find them.
Compiz is a mad 3D-effects magic thing, so if you're keen on eye-candy, you might want to switch to that. Again, the settings menu...
The Mate panels are also customisable. Right-click on them and you'll be able to add panels, and add little apps and extra stuff. I like the Window Switcher myself.
http://mate-desktop.org/themes is the official Mate website, but since Mate is a fork of the old Gnome desktop, the old Gnome themes should mostly work. Find them on http://gnome-look.org/ under Metacity (the old name for Marco)
http://www.deviantart.com/browse/all/?q=linux+mate+themes will give you the real hard-core themers, whose themes include everything, but also tend to give you scripts and downloads for all the stuff. That's a great way to learn how to theme your desktop.
> The name "MATE", pronounced Ma-Tay, comes from yerba maté
TIL - though as a Spanish speaker, I pronounced it fine all along. Listen to it.
Then you'll love MATE which is basically Gnome 2 forked and evolved by people who also disliked what Gnome 3 was doing. Linux Mint also has MATE as one of its primary desktop environments.
Yes, you can build it from source. It, and all its dependencies are open source and should be buildable forever, however, as Gnome 2 is no longer being developed, your target platform will inevitably drift away from what the expected build platform was for Gnome 2.
Just because Gnome 2 has been end-of-life'd doesn't mean it's dead. That just means the official Gnome 2 will not be receiving any further updates. Instead, the community creates forks with different names, like MATE. MATE will continue to be updated and built for modern systems as long as the community puts it together.
This is a far better solution, in my opinion, than building old code yourself.
Edit:
Here's how to install Gnome 2 on Ubuntu.
>sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://packages.mate-desktop.org/repo/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) main"
>sudo apt-get update
>sudo apt-get install mate-archive-keyring
>sudo apt-get update
>sudo apt-get install mate-core
>sudo apt-get install mate-desktop-environment
>Other functionality removed
More of the same all in the name of consistent user experience.
Gnome 2 was my go to desktop, I assumed I would move on to Gnome 3 without many problems but their view toward user customization got more narrow and I ended up using Mate. I never liked gnome 3 due to this and unity is the same way, if you like the choices they make for you, you're in luck. If you want to change more than your desktop background without push back look else where. Mate, Cinnamon, XFCE, KDE, etc. least you have options.
just adding an additional option to check out. MATE which is a Gnome 2 fork. So if you don't like unity or it's a resource hog on your PC (no idea about the specs) the community has you covered between XFCE and MATE plus you'll get LTS support with 12.04 regardless of your UI preferences.
Things are slightly more complicated than your question puts it, but to cut straight to the answer: Yes, you'll want to install the MATE desktop environment for that.
If it doesn't bother you to reinstall your system, it's usually recommended to directly install Ubuntu MATE, which is just that: Ubuntu with MATE preinstalled in a nice and clean bundle.
You can also convert your current system over, though.
For that, you'll want to install "ubuntu-mate-desktop". For example, press Ctrl+Alt+T to bring up a terminal and enter "sudo apt install ubuntu-mate-desktop".
After that, log out, click on the Ubuntu-logo and choose "MATE" and log back in.
AFAIK Ubuntu is the only distro that does stuff like that. However, there are alternatives.
If you want the same interface as the old Ubuntu versions, GNOME 2 (which I believe Ubuntu 8.04 used), then you should try out MATE, a fork of GNOME 2. Linux Mint is a very noob friendly and very popular distribution based on Ubuntu and it can come packaged with MATE by default.
I use cinnamon because I think it looks a lot better (more modern), but it uses more resources so if that's important for you, then consider MATE.
MATE: http://mate-desktop.org/
Cinnamon: http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/
Yeah, that looks like "gnome2", while yours is just plain gnome3
probably the person is running MATE, http://mate-desktop.org/
'yum groupinstall mate-desktop' would give you MATE for Fedora, or you could use yumex -> click on "groups" and pick "MATE Desktop" on the left side and choose which packages you would like to have.
Da bravo nerd la prima cosa che ho pensato è stata questa.
Comunque al di la del nome mi piace tanto il sito very nineties: sfondo da pugno negli occhi, scritte sull'immagine con rimasugli bianchi, font di dimensioni mastodontiche e giustificazione alla cazzo di cane (che per qualche ragione funziona invece bene nella versione inglese). Manca giusto una gif animata "WORK IN PROGRESS" per rendere completo l'effetto Geocities.
[](/notimpressed) Really? Out of all the DEs out there, you chose Unity‽ [](/sp)
[](/twipride) Oh well, it's still nicer than Metro. Plus, you've got that delicious speed and flexibility of Ubuntu. Still, I would recommend giving Cinnamon (my personal favourite and current environment), KDE (used it for a while in 2008, liked it other that the slight weirdness with GTK software, I hear this is fixed now), or MATE (never tried this one, but it's based off of GNOME2, which I loved) a spin once you've gotten comfortable with package management and the like. [](/sp)
[](/adorkable) Little hint: if you are the "Power User" type, and want to really have control over your system, get comfortable with Synaptic (not sure if it comes with Ubuntu anymore, get it from the Software Center if you don't have it), your terminal (in particular, regex and file operations), and Compiz (I think Unity still uses it). You will thank me later. [](/sp) [](/sp)
[](/generictwilicorn) Basically, get to know your system. You don't have to buy mountains of books on the subject or anything, just get a good feel for the way things work. When you are ready to move beyond the confines of Unity, take a gander at some other DEs, and have fun transitioning your system (it's easier than a Windows upgrade if you know what you are doing, but it can get messy if you don't). If you ever royally screw up, back up your home folder (/home/YOURNAMEHERE/), wipe everything, and install over. You can then proceed to restore whatever files you like.
GNOME 2 has gotten a revival under the MATE project. So, if you do really want pretty much the exact same thing back as you had back then, then that might be your best bet. As for distros with that, Ubuntu MATE is the distro with the most weight behind MATE at the moment, although Linux Mint MATE Edition is also solid.
Sorry..DE==Desktop environment, the way your desktop looks and behaves...my fault.
In your case that is Mate. But now I am afraid I can't be much helpful any more...I have more or less zero experience with mate. So afraid I can only link to some solution without knowing if they really work.
2: http://www.linuxandlife.com/2012/05/hide-partition-icons-on-desktop-in.html
3: Looks like this depends on the theme mate uses...couldn't find anything how to change the colour of the panel directly. http://mate-desktop.org/themes/
5: Right-clicking doesn't give you the option to get properties of a directory? But yes, in general it's not like in windows...linux partitions are not clearly seperated like the drives in windows. They are part of the directory tree so a file /boot/vmlinuz is on a different partition than a file /usr/bin/ls...but in the same directory structure.
From http://mate-desktop.org/ - "The name "MATE", pronounced Ma-Tay, comes from yerba maté, a species of holly native to subtropical South America. Its leaves contain caffeine and are used to make infusions and a beverage called mate."
"yerba maté"
So it should be lower case and accented, upstream says so. Until it has been changed, while it's fully capitalised I will pronounce it by shouting "MATE!".
MATE is opensource, its just a fork of Gnome2, apparently a bunch of developers were pissed that the core Gnome developers went to Gnome3 (a BIG mistake IMO), and forked Gnome2, and called it MATE.. Dunno what MATE stands for, but its just like Gnome2. Components of Gnome2, such as Nautilus are renamed. You can download it at http://mate-desktop.org/
Considering the fact that it started with one guy and now they have ten people listed on the git plus support from the people at Linux Mint I think it should be around for a long time. They also have their website up over at Mate-Desktop.org.
To be totally fair I'am posting this from Linux Mint 13 w/ Mate (dual boot with Win 7).
To be honest I'm one of the Unity/Gnome Shell haters. I liked Gnome 2 infinitely more. Most people I know went to XFCE, while I gave KDE a try, and I like it. I might be switching to Mate at some point but I'll need to put it through a few more trials before committing to it.
That's the greatest thing about Linux - variety. There's something to suit everybody's taste. Nothing is forced. And if you can't find something you like there are no barriers to creating something of your own imagination.
As a user who has Xubuntu 12.04 installed (and as done since beta 1). I advise you check it out but with a small asterisk. It's gnome 2-like and is compatible with the GTK 2 themes (eg from gnome look) but doesn't have quite the customisation or programme familiarity as Gnome 2 (maybe 80-90% there) but just not that extra bit you need. Not knocking it whatsoever as It's a fine DE. What I would suggest to you is, upgrade to 12.04 and install Mate. It's a direct continuation of the Gnome 2 code and functions identically. I have it installed and am using it as we speak. This way you get Gnome 2 (essentially, it just has a different name) and the LTS support of 12.04. Alternatively if you are looking to experiment and move away from Ubuntu (while keeping the .deb and apt-get functionality), try Linux Mint Debian Edition. The current RC build has Mate as the default desktop and Linux Mint has put it's usual customisations on it (custom software manager, update manager, theme, icons and Mint Menu). The current stable has Gnome 2 but it would be a seamless transition as I said. Just my 2c.
It should work fine for you, as /u/daemonpenguin explained, Cinnamon might be a little hard on the system resources. You could simply install Mate either through the terminal or synaptic package manager. After you do that, log out and choose to log back in under the Mate Desktop Environment.
Installation instructions http://wiki.mate-desktop.org/download
If you want something more Gnome2 like try Ubuntu MATE or another distro with MATE. It's a fork of Gnome2 and it's pretty good.
I also like Cinnamon because the default hotkeys are more my style.
Yes, MATE is another DE. According to their website, it looks like they've forked an old GNOME version (before it switched to it's more "modern" layout), and are updating off that design language.
The nice thing about DEs is that they're almost always easy to install and switch as you please...so go ahead and try as many as you want! You're not bound to any one environment :)
Ubuntu MATE or Linux Mint MATE - MATE uses the Gnome 2 user interface which is very Windows-like, and both distributions are conservative, solid productions.
That said, "stock" Ubuntu is growing on me - Unity has come a long way.
>the command line is a pretty essential thing to learn if you're going to use Linux
This is only true if you use an advanced Linux distro like Arch or Gentoo, or your job is in networking or developing. As I mentioned before, Linux is a sliding scale of difficulty. If you only do general public things, you only need to know how to click an icon on the desktop or start menu; same as Windows.
You literally don't ever have to open a terminal in easy distros like Ubuntu and Mint. They have control panels designed to do just about anything you want without a terminal. Honestly, if someone can't figure out how to use a modern Linux GUI, then they probably don't know how to do anything in Windows either.
I would suggest Linux Mint 17 MATE edition. It's a long term support release based on Ubuntu and uses the MATE desktop environment. It's a fair balance of relatively recently released software and stability. Features are listed here.
It's still in Release Candidate status, so you could wait a bit for it to become officially released, or you can install it now and then update it to the final version after its release. Screenshots of MATE desktop environment.
I prefer a little Debian Based Distribution called Point Linux. It's most recent version is based on Debian Wheezy, and it comes by default with the MATE Desktop Environment, a fork of Gnome2.
Xubuntu is the one I started with, very solid, but Lubuntu runs a tighter ship apparently, and CrunchBang moreso I believe, also google ArchBang
Edit: and M.A.T.E for Gnome love
First of all, KDE is intended to be easy to use, I don't think you have to worry about getting the hang of it. But there's always Mate, a fork of Gnome 2. And neither Debian nor Opensuse is trying to force you to use KDE; they both have various versions. There's a Debian iso that comes with Xfce, which you might also want to consider.
It's true that Debian is what Ubuntu is based on, but it's less polished. I've never tried Opensuse, but it seems very user-friendly. The wiki generally explains how to do things with GUIs (using screenshots), so you're not forced to use the command-line. I would say that learning the command-line does pay off, and Debian's documentation is better for this, but if you really don't want to, you might prefer Opensuse.
In any case, Debian is better for 'learning Linux', so you might want to try that first (give it a serious try, though) and fall back to Opensuse.
Honestly, install Lubuntu 12.04 then install the MATE Desktop packages. It's simple, stable, and fast. The only significant problem with moving to Linux is if you play lots of modern video games. Some will still run using Wine just fine though.