So I thought I would take a break from studying for my conflict exam to jump on here and talk to you about a piece of interesting news that cropped up over the weekend

The Linux mint team finally left a blog post (www.linuxmint.com) about the forthcoming Linux Mint 12 release. I have been looking forward to this news for about a month now as I currently use mint at home. The preview is looking rather good, it will come with Kernel 3.0 and Gnome 3.2 with a bit of a spin on it with what the mint team is calling Mint Gnome Shell Extension (MGSEs), although I think I will be turning off a few of the extensions my self as I don't think they make the distro look glossy just cluttered, completely my opinion and at least the mint team are giving me the opportunity to change things if I don't like them. Of course they are also putting in the gnome 2 fork called MATE and I'm sure there will be the usual KDE, LXDE and XFCE spins.

On the matter of Desktop Environments that seems to have caused such a furore amongst the FOSS Community. Why in the hell is what Gnome and Ubuntu doing such a big deal? Almost every distro offers multiple DE's and I'm sure that if you don't like one there is another out there just for you. Isn't that kinda the point of Linux. It seems to me that people are quite willing to criticise at every opportunity and never offer anything constructive. And at the end of the day, Gnome and Ubuntu are not your projects, the people who are actually running and owning the project can do whatever they like with them as it is their's, don't like it, fine, change, it's not like you don't have a choice. I did read an interesting comment over the weekend that said the main problem with the criticism is that those who don't like the changes are being incredibly vocal, while those who do like the changes aren't saying anything as they don't have to. Whether or not Gnome and Ubuntu's Unity have the right idea only time will tell. But at least they are trying to give Linux a character of it's own and not end up being a clone of Windows or Mac. I would also just quickly like to say that if you don't like the amount of clicking involved in Gnome shell to access your apps, install gnome pie, problem solved. 

Anyways........ back on topic. I can't wait to give Mint 12 a go it looks like it's going to be one hell of a distro and offer all the usual minty goodness we have come to expect from Clem and the team. I would also like to offer them congratulations for reaching the number one spot on distrowatch.

as usual comments, criticisms and correction are more than welcome

Talk soon!