Mint Control Center

nebcanuck
   12 years ago
  941
  Selected
Right now, the "Control Center" for Mint is simply the Gnome Control Center, which is really minimal. All it really does is offers quick-launch buttons for each of the individual programs that control the Gnome desktop. It's just an alternative to scrolling through your menu a number of times if you have to make a lot of changes, in the end. I think that we can do a lot better than that. Putting forth a new, intuitive control panel would give us another major edge over Ubuntu, would give Windows users another reason to feel comfortable moving to a new system, and would even be awesome for committed users like myself who prefer to use GUI tools when possible but hate how many different programs compose the Gnome desktop configuration tools.

Mandriva's Control Panel would be a good example of what we should aim for.
Latest comments
des000 3 weeks ago

Producing a GUI server version would be great too, as a second project, sort of a special "fork". It could still run the cinnamon desktop, but have something like the server wizard in Windows server, which would have links to the control panel. It could have server wizards that are installed by default, like Mageia. But also be more like YaST in version 9.0, for completeness and with the ncurses added in. I think it should not be built from scratch, if both YaST and Mageia control center are GPL. I think it should start with the Mageia control center, as it's more clean, and then add code from YaST, to build something the likes of which has never been seen, again assuming they are both GPL. It should be mostly designed for cinnamon, but work elsewhere too, on most to all desktop enviroments. Please check if it's GPL, and if so, please do that, and then don't leave it at that, but add more server wizards and the like, as well as other desktop configuration tools, that create the configuration files for you, but DON'T prevent you from modifying them.

Then you'd be number one desktop anywhere for Linux!

smoky 1 year ago

Well, after being on the Windows Development team for some years, I finally was tired of the horrid way Windows hogs up space in the computer, so blew it away and now use Linux mint on my big beast and wow, doesn't it fly. I've use myriads of other Linux distros but love the simplicity and the workings of Linux Mint, so very happy camper now.

JonTrv 2 years ago

One thing I would like to see added, in the 'screensaver' section I would love to have a 'preview' button that would instantly trigger the screensaver, the intent being that you could check if the customisations you have made work as you want them to, e.g. is the font and size of your screen locked message exactly what you want. Right now I have to set the delay to 1min and wait.

RytronII 2 years ago

I concur.

aaronrv 2 years ago

I agree.

eengnerd 4 years ago

As a former Windows app developer and consultant, one of the things I disliked most about all versions of Windows was that Control Panel did not include ALL of the settings for the entire OS! Cinnamon desktop is the ONLY desktop to get this right! I hope you NEVER give up on this idea! Using LM 19.1

Arthur Baldwin

JR86 4 years ago

Agree..have been thinking about this a lot lately. Would love to see a security manager integrated also.

dexter_ose 6 years ago

Promote.
Also 'Desktop','panels', 'themes', 'desklets', 'effects', 'display', 'backgrounds' must be merged into customisations. For windows users it's difficult to find each setting in different options

carpenpa 6 years ago

As a newbie I found myself downloading several different "tweak" tools to try and customise my desktop and many of them conflicted or didn't work.It would be much better as you say, to have one control center to do it all from.

JesperE 7 years ago

I completely agree, it is a good idea to make the control center both more minty than the standard gnome, and certainly more able to handle all the little configs that otherwise takes a lot of scripting and searching of the net to accomplish. One caution though: it'd be troublesome if in our greed for more functionality we disregard the beauty of Mint's simpleness and lightweight approach. KISS.

RoundDuckMan 7 years ago

Yes please, this is the kind of stuff that made me go Mint in the first place, GUI tools. The more the merrier. :D

EvgenyPlekhanov 7 years ago

It is a good idea.

vansleemint 7 years ago

help me, please !!!
since i upgrade to rafaela edition, i've loose my controlcentre, then i update controlcentre, but it can't help me. the control centre still can't launch,
what can ido to solve this problem?

3ds12 7 years ago

YES! Do not make Mint look like a standard thing. Make it its own sort! This idea is one of the reasons that mint will be getting better and more loved!
I´m 100% behind this! :)

FeatherLight 8 years ago

A nice idea. Could be nicer if system add-onn/plugin modules (with devs approval for individual items), could be added to said control center as a menu/sub-menu. Depending on system impact. But that would require a lot of work to make it play nice.

randysvh 8 years ago

I get along OK with the gnome control center, but there is no doubt that a Mint control center that would be compatible across the board for each desktop. It would be a great improvement as the gui makes it a lot easier for my novice customer who have no clue about the command line tools let alone figure out how to use them. I think it would be great to look at the functionality of some of the other distros and improve on a combo idea to make it all mint.

squid-f 8 years ago

Something like YaST for Opensuse is indeed very powerful and ease the administration.

oraclejmt 8 years ago

Yeah, I see where you are. Like Yast in OpenSUSE, which in my opinion is THE BEST Control Panel in the entire GNU/Linux Community.

IsaacM 8 years ago

PCLinuxOS also has a great control center

pirategeorges 8 years ago

Good idea indeed!