Now that Canonical has totally lost their way and turned the Ubuntu desktop into a pig's breakfast of inutility and ugliness (and that's only the beginning of their sins against a platform they thought had reached too great a height and decided to destroy), I've gone looking for something better and think I've found it...
...in Linux Mint. I've chosen (a bit arbitrarily since I haven't really experienced Mate) Cinnamon as the UI for my desktop.
So far, I've been very pleased with everything. Because of evolution in how Mint implements /etc/resolv.conf, I'm unable to get my employer's VPN running, but I've got other hardware still running Ubuntu Maverick and can use that until I'm able to deal with the problem. All my other productivity software is loaded and I've been running for a couple of days quite pleased so far. The installation wasn't too bad after over-coming a problem with the fact that I sit behind my employer's proxy.
What's nice is to come into a working desktop that appears unlikely to freeze the way my Ubuntu Precise desktop has almost since the day I installed it last December. Since then, I've had a couple of experiences with that platform and they've been mostly negative. I write software for a living; I don't know what's behind Canonical's insistence upon the Unity desktop nor some of the other changes they've made, but it's not helpful to my day-to-day productivity. Lucid/Maverick worked fine for me; Natty/Oneiric were pretty much just plain broken and Precise/Quantal were more stable, but demonstrated that Canonical was not going to give choices back to us.
Linux Mint is pretty much a "corrected" Ubuntu and, I hope, the awaited heir to Ubuntu's long-time superiority in the Linux world. Mint is apparently the fourth most popular desktop for home use (behind Windows, Macintosh and presumably Ubuntu, but that's changing fast by all reports). Actually, among Linux desktops, Mint is now the premier download.
I still run and am completely pleased with Precise server for all my server needs. I don't forsee changing that until Canonical releases their next LTS platform which, I hope, will continue to be dynamite.
I'll move to Mint at home as soon as I can juggle my hardware. Then, I'll move my web server from Lucid desktop to Precise and put the box over by my ESXi hardware. Fun times!
