January 08, 2013, 10:40 AM — It's no secret that mobile-style interfaces such as Unity, GNOME 3, and even Windows 8's Modern UI have met with only a lukewarm reception among many desktop PC users.
That's why we've seen such a flurry of workarounds spring up for users of Windows 8, and it's why we've seen efforts like SolusOS and the MATE desktop emerge on the Linux side.
It's also why I unofficially crowned the old, traditional favorite--GNOME 2--king of the Linux desktop once again for 2012.
I've already looked in some depth at GNOME 2-minded SolusOS, but on Monday fans of the classic desktop gained a new compelling Linux option: Fuduntu 2013.1, which made its official debut today.
A rolling release distro
Fuduntu was born back in 2010 as a Fedora-based Linux distribution. It was forked about a year later, however, and now aims to offer a desktop experience "somewhere in-between Fedora and Ubuntu," as I noted in a story last fall.
Even more compelling, Fuduntu uses GNOME 2 to deliver what it calls a "classic desktop experience."
Fuduntu is a rolling release distribution, and it's also optimized for computing on the go; in fact, users may realize battery life improvements of 30% or more over other Linux distributions, its creators say.
Netflix and Steam
2013.1 is the Linux distribution's first quarterly release of this new year, and it includes some particularly notable additions.
