Cinnamon Desktop: Breaks with GNOME, finds beefed-up Nemo The Cinnamon Desktop project recently released version 2, a major overhaul of the desktop environment that's best known as the default option for Linux Mint's flagship release. Cinnamon 2.0 will be part of Linux Mint 16, "Petra", scheduled for release towards the end of November. The team behind Cinnamon plans to backport the …
> Now it's simple to say, for instance, always open text files in GEdit (or Sublime or whichever app you prefer).
Is it also simple to change the file type association afterwards? This is where some desktops with similar feature (Windows included) have failed badly: reassignment is buried somewhere deep, or possible only by hacking a configuration file.
First, let me say I'm a Mint user (though I haven't tried Cinnamon 2.0 yet - I'll probably wait the next LTS release before I upgrade as I'm happy with Cinnamon 1.8 on Mint 14). But I can't let that criticism of Windows pass - changing file associations on Windows isn't hard. Right click->Open With... find the desired application and tick the "Always use selected program" option.
I used to use Ubuntu, until I installed that first version with Unity, I then spent the next few minutes trying to figure out what I must have down wrong to screw up the GUI. I quickly discovered that it wasn't anything I had done, it was that some "decider" somewhere had decided that they didn't want me as a user anymore by trying to force that horrible GUI on me.
Been using Mint ever since (XFCE though). Come join us.
That is the first thing I'd disable. Why should the frigging computer get to decide where I want to put MY application windows?
Typical of the dumbing down introduced by MS and slavishly copied elsewhere without giving it a modicum of thought as to its usefulness. If you can't disable it then I'll never ever use it.
Dunno why so many downvotes. Edge snapping has only ever annoyed me, and that's since way before the Xbox.
Side by side comparisons? What's wrong with putting the two windows.. err... side by side?
(Or top and bottom, or one corner and t'other, or pretty much wherever you like, and not have to be careful not to move the windows a modicum in the wrong direction and OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE...)
You can turn it off if you want. But I find it unbelievably helpful to be able to put two documents side by side with a Win-Left, Alt-Tab, Win-Right. All my screen is instantly used for exactly what I want to use it for and no fiddling around finding the hover spots to resize the windows.
When I tried Mint last a few weeks ago it was ctrl+super+left/right, and the additional key was a minor annoyance, but nowhere near as annoying as finding the finickier-than-in-Windows edge spots for resizing.
I have to agree with you Tom. Anyone who has used multiple desktops over the last 15 years would of just put these "new" features in a bullet list, nothing else. The fact the author did the exact opposite tells much about their exposure. While the XBOX tie in reveals the authors age, I don't think the author is even old enough to know that you NEVER relate a Microsoft product directly to Linux, no matter if it is valid or not! :-) Mmmm, Fresh Meat!
"Cinnamon 2.0 will no doubt be a big selling point for Linux Mint 16 when it does arrive."
Really? Then KDE should be the market killer for Mint! Is Mint really this far behind on features?
XBOX SNAP ! SNAP ! XBOX SNAP !
>Then KDE should be the market killer for Mint!
I assume you mean Cinnamon as of course there is a Mint KDE (and Mate and XFCE) version as well. [Holy War Alert:] That said KDE has always been bloated and often times the snappiness of the DE along with the ease of workflows needed to get shit done with it are of more value to many than a bazillion unused features or an entire software ecosystem pretending to be a DE. But at least with *nix each can have his own.
No, I mean KDE. If anyone believes Cinnamon is going to "be a big selling point for Linux Mint 16" then why the hell not choose a desktop that already has these features?
Let's say KDE is bloated because it refuses to be stuck in 1999. Well, what does that say about Cinnamon which has obviously left 1999 and coming up to times like KDE? I guess there will just be too many options for people at some point and they will have to abandoned it to find another 1999 desktop.
"...an entire software ecosystem pretending to be a DE."
I assume you imply this since some people don't understand you don't have to install EVERYTHING like a check box monkey. Of course, it does have everything.
>Let's say KDE is bloated because it refuses to be stuck in 1999.
So you need bloaty to be modern because bloat is the future, ah ok. I think you need to also put Win98 in a VM and see what DE in 1999 really looked like. Even LXDE from five years ago is far more modern and functional.
>some people don't understand you don't have to install EVERYTHING like a check box monkey.
Yes yes of course. Still I find the phrase bare bones KDE to be rather amusing. To each his own. Lot of people swear by KDE even through its FUBAR phase. At least the devs listened to the users eventually unlike the clueless Gnome people as of late.
Cinnamon has had automatic tiling/snapping for ages too. The specific "new" features here (I have no idea of their uniqueness, but they are new to Cinnamon) are;
- The ability to resize snapped windows - ie if a window is dragged to the edge it will automatically take up half the screen, but you can then resize it while retaining it's "snappedness". Win 7 behaves like this, Cinnamon didn't.
- You can have a window snapped to one edge, and then other windows can't be dragged on top of it and won't maximise on top of it. I haven't seen this feature in Windows (no doubt there's add-ons which enable it).
"I haven't seen this feature in Windows"
This is far from unique., maybe farther than the rest listed here.
KDE has it, but via the "always on top"/focus button that can be assigned to any window. I use tiling and focus daily. I still like to run my shell and editor separately, so I can keep the editor on top at all times. What is nice about the focus button is that if 2 are both enabled, they behave like normal windows, but all other windows will remain on the bottom. When tiling, this has beneficial effects not immediately noticeable.
Of course this isn't unique to KDE, I remember using focus in windows 95 (might of had to use "Blinds"). Also, for some reason I remember using it on MAC before that, can't be sure, but I think OS 5 had it.
On my Ubuntu 12.04 machine, which isn't exactly a graphical workhorse and I had a few issues with the graphics lagging and tearing in a way that Mate doesn't at the moment.
Keyboard shortcuts refused to work too, which was the main reason I quickly logged back out and into Mate.
I do like the edge snapping though, it's one of the better features in Win 7 (using meta+arrow is quite nice) and while I'm sure KDE had it first, I've never been much of a fan of KDE. Still I like it enough that I think it'll go on my 13.10 install at home, where I've got the graphics card to power it.
I've been using Mint full-time now for just under a year and it's pretty good. Much better than when I last tried running a Linux desktop distro on my laptop (3 years ago). There's a few things that need adding though to maximise its appeal...
1) Desktop icon alignment in columns AND rows (Nemo)
2) Easier configuration of desktop icon and font size (Nemo)
3) Keyboard control of the favourites panel in the Cinnamon menu
Well the article does say that Cinnamon is becoming distro agnostic. So you can use Cinnamon and keep Ubuntu. Seeing Mint is son of Ubuntu anyway, choosing Mint does not imply leaving Ubuntu. From my point of view I dislike Ubuntu, but if Mint had the Unity desktop I would download and install it immediately.
Cinnamon 2 is already available in other distributions, Fedora for example:
# rpm -qi cinnamon
Name : cinnamon
Version : 2.0.3
Release : 1.fc19
Architecture: x86_64
Install Date: Wed 23 Oct 2013 11:58:06 BST
Group : Unspecified
Size : 6762352
License : GPLv2+ and LGPLv2+
Signature : RSA/SHA256, Sat 19 Oct 2013 02:02:52 BST, Key ID 07477e65fb4b18e6
Source RPM : cinnamon-2.0.3-1.fc19.src.rpm
Build Date : Fri 18 Oct 2013 17:57:02 BST
Build Host : buildvm-16.phx2.fedoraproject.org
Relocations : (not relocatable)
Packager : Fedora Project
Vendor : Fedora Project
URL : http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com
Summary : Window management and application launching for GNOME
Description :
Cinnamon is a Linux desktop which provides advanced
innovative features and a traditional user experience.
The desktop layout is similar to Gnome 2.
The underlying technology is forked from Gnome Shell.
The emphasis is put on making users feel at home and providing
them with an easy to use and comfortable desktop experience.
However I have XFCE on Mint 13 LTS and it works well. I don't really want to update my DE and/or distro more often than I have a shave or haircut, despite that being pretty much de rigeur for Linux desktop users ;)
Maybe I'll give it a go when it hits the next LTS.
Choice; it's a wonderful thing.
"Or at least, it doesn't play nicely alongside Unity, which I wasn't able to use again until I had un-installed Cinnamon 2.0."
Sounds like something Ubuntu should adopt!
I'm still on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS desktop even though it's out of support mainly because I'm so used to the GNOME 2 interface it has. I have no interest/reason to change, though eventually(I've decided that time will be when I get new hardware that doesn't work with 10.04) I'll have to upgrade to something and Mint or Ubuntu with Cinnamon sounds like the next best thing.
Firefox may not be getting updates anymore on 10.04 but I suppose the upside to that is it's stopped breaking shit every few weeks as a result. I run firefox under sudo (to access another user account not for root) under a 'firefox' account that has limited rights(which makes some things complicated as I have to trade files between accounts in /tmp), and java stays off most of the time, along with flash click to run, security wise just being on Linux I don't feel there is a huge threat to me.
"I'm still on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS desktop even though it's out of support mainly because I'm so used to the GNOME 2 interface it has."
@ Nate Amsden
Have a look at CentOS 6.x.
Gnome 2.28, Firefox ESR and LibreOffice stable. Support including 'deltas' for newer hardware until 2017. Legacy security only updates after that until 2020.
Add the EPEL + Nux 'stella-desktop' repository for overlap free multimedia stuff and you won't need to worry about the RPM package oddness unless you need really current scripting and compiler versions.
Bit of a lifeboat until the desktop evolution slows...
We've redesigned the desktop. Again. Applications? Nah someone else will do those...
This is why Linux has never and will never catch on for the desktop. All of the development for desktop Linux for the past 17 years that I've used it has been on the installer, the desktop "experience" and text editors. Oh, and GIMP, GIMP is pretty good.
I've seen very little evidence of any applications being written to meet the needs of the users once they start using their computer. Even the office suite was a gift, and most of what happened to that since is the UI.
Sadly I don't think this will ever change because there are two kinds of users on Linux. Those using it as a server, and those writing the OS. Because nobody gets paid to write the stuff they won't use they don't write that stuff so all of the other types of user in the world turn to Windows or OSX. It's sad really, when I first saw it, it seemed like such a good idea.
Have to disagree in a couple of points. First, applications have improved a lot. Take a look at some of the KDE SC apps, like Kate (swiss knife disguised as text editor) KDenlive (non linear video editing) K3B (CD/DVD burning) or Amarok (music player) Since I use mostly KDE, I can only cite FireFox, GIMP and LibreOffice besides those.
Second, a DE is the first thing people see when they want to get into Linux. A bad DE is going to turn them away without ever trying applications. So it is only natural that there is so much focus on the DE. Apps come later, desktop first.
But I have also to agree with you: we still have deficits in lots of application niches. And there is probably too much effort spent in creating alternative DEs, if only the people doing that would focus in customizing, theming, or creating widgets for an existing DE that should free resources to work on something else.
For me it is a constant struggle between my inner manager wanting to optimize the effort (and avoid wasting resources) and the chaotic darwinesque bazaar approach, where you know in advance that lots of projects -and thus, time and effort from people- will go nowhere. However, evolution wins on the long term over management. And in this particular case, you have to wonder how much deaf the Gnome team has to be to have a fork from their previous version become more popular than their current offering.
> We've redesigned the desktop. Again. Applications? Nah someone else will do those...
>
> This is why Linux has never and will never catch on for the desktop.
You think you're really witty but you're just an idiot. This is EXACTLY the same kind of nonsense that Microsoft is subjecting people to with the interface that's no longer called Metro. The Ribbon was the same thing too.
So the idea that only Linux subjects you to UI churn is highly bogus nonsense.
And truly, if anything MATE and Cinnamon are LEGACY interfaces. They are a refuge from the people that don't want to be subjected to Unity or Metro. They are actually an example of good HID principles in action.
They're interfaces consistent with what you already know.
He might have had a point in 1995 when you had to worry about entering refresh timings for your CRT in XFree86 config text files before you even got a working GUI (praying you didn't trash your monitor) or having to spend a weekend crossing your fingers that you could compile in a device driver that worked with your modem before you then spent hours getting PPP working but those days are long gone. Seriously these days on any decent distro you can just delete the xterm icons if you feel like it.
@AC you're right the apps are a little better than they used to be, although in the list you gave you included a text editor, a commercial browser that was gifted and a pointless fork of the office suite that was gifted to the community which kind of backs up my point a bit - most of the coders are not working on apps for normal people to make the shift and as such Linux will never be mainstream. In the years I've been using Linux I've seen the massive rise of OSX, the rise and fall of Symbian, the rise of iOS and Android with full and rich application ecosystems being created for each and every one of them. In that time Linux has changed a lot less than people around here seem to think it has, the fact that @asdf is still babbling about drivers shows this well. If they weren't an issue it wouldn't even come up, but I still have driver issues on my standard HP Elitebook with Red Hat, Debian and Ubuntu even before I get to having no applications. Since I only use it for server admin it suits me fine as I have a browser and an SSH shell but when I need to do documentation I need Windows, Office and Visio. When I want to watch a BluRay movie I need Windows or OSX to do so legally and without messing about too much. The list goes on...
@Jedidiah, Microsoft can redesign the desktop as much as they like, they already own the desktop market because of the reasons I said above and so can now move back from apps to OS design if they like.
@tracyanne - go on then, share with the world what you DO with your Linux machine and perhaps I'll accept your point. Any fool can install the OS and call themselves a Linux user, what I'm saying is that there is then a limit as to what you can do with that computer due to a lack of finished applications.
@asdf if you delete the xterm icons you'd have even fewer applications to use!
"a text editor, a commercial browser that was gifted and a pointless fork of the office suite that was gifted to the community"
- Kate: a text editor is a basic tool that any decent environment needs to have. So having one of the best ones around is not that bad, isn't it? Are you happy with Notepad on Windows or you rather go and download your Notepad++ after installing Windows? I prefer my OS to come with a decent one, thank you.
- LibreOffice: pointless fork of an office suite it may be, but is certainly the most popular and on par in features with what MS had in 2003, more than enough for a lot of people. Which brings the point, how old is Office? So being old does not mean being bad. And being gifted is... well, free. Don't want to discuss the reasons why it is free, just noting that it is and matches commercial products.
- A commercial browser: the fact that Firefox is available on other platforms does not in any way degrade its quality under Linux. It is a pity that we cannot have Safari or IE for Linux to compare with, so in this case I consider being multiplatform a really distinctive and desirable feature for a browser.
And I mentioned a few other apps that you can't even nitpick on? Is your argument based on your experiences from five years ago?
"I still have driver issues on my standard HP Elitebook with Red Hat, Debian and Ubuntu" mmmm... not challenging that as I don't have experience with that model. So you may have a valid point for yourself, but it cannot be translated to "everyone is like me" I don't have any driver issues with my four -two desktops, two laptops- Linux machines, while the NVidia driver on my Windows 7 desktop hangs once or twice a week. The same machine that is rock solid under Linux, with the NVidia proprietary Linux driver by the way. Anecdotal evidences are plenty, but don't make an universal point.
@AC When I say gifted I mean that it wasn't written by the open source community but was a commercial product to which the source was opened when it failed commercially. Libre Office may be OK for many people, but it's far from being on a par with Office 2003 and certainly not up to writing large documents. My experience is based on continual use of Linux in various forms over the last 17 years. Yes you're right it's nice to have a nice text editor, but having 200 variations of a text editor and one very poor copy of Visio isn't helping the platform gain users on the desktop. All I'm saying is that it's time we either accept that Linux will never catch on for mainstream desktop use, or some of the open source coders will need to start coding things for other people to use instead of writing a new GUI or text editor every couple of months.
I'm not bashing Linux, I'm not bashing the coders. All I'm saying is that the coders fascination with installers, GUIs and text editors is doing more harm than good in terms of adoption rate. I say these things not because I dislike Linux but because I want it to succeed. I also say these things because I know that if some of these talented coders set about trying to fix the actual problems they would have it cracked in a matter of months.
Not to step on your rant but you do know with Wine, VMWare or Virtual Box your host OS is not the be all end all any more right? If you absolutely have to have MS Office it has ran on Wine for a long time now and ever longer with VMWare. Wine will even play a majority of Windows games well these day (PlayOnLinux for the win). Actually for its market share the *nix app ecosystem is surprisingly good. It not a real big surprise that many commercial apps are not available for LInux for the same reason the WP app store sucks. Developers pay close attention to market share when going to the effort to develop or port an app.
"Oh I'm sure you could give examples of big documents being created in the suite. That doesn't make it suitable and doesn't make your experience pleasant, it just means that you carried on regardless"
Er - no. I just type stuff.
A recent example: 140 pages, 595 mathematical formulas, 35 diagrams and 63 tables and the 2.1Mb document loads fine.
The printed version is being used by a few hundred students. PDF available for when they lose the paper one.
PS: yes I know about LaTeX.
Clement Lefebvre can always be depended upon to ultimately employ the correct solution for his users.
This is why he and his work will be one of the "last men standing" when the big Linux 'shake-out' occurs
Puffery, dissembling, circumlocution, prevarication, and lying are no longer nearly as widely-tolerated and embraced (except, of course, by the ignorant) as they, unfortunately, used to be.
Absolutely nothing is to be read into this comment.
This post has been deleted by its author
Debian and XFCE here and lovin' it. I moved to this when Mint became a little heavy for my little old laptop. In fact, some of my less technically inclined friends want me to burn an ISO for them to put on some older equipment. Keep the old stuff functional, why throw out cash for new equipment.
> Keep the old stuff functional, why throw out cash for new equipment
How dare you heretic the Apple folks would respond. Don't you know you have to refresh your bling every few years or you can't be in the hipster club? I am with you though. I have a 2007 Mac Pro desktop that even though Apple doesn't want to support anymore Mint Linux does just great on it. It doesn't hurt Mint is better than Mac OS for what I use it for anyway. Windows is for running in a VM only.
Why is Mint so popular? It's because Clem actually listens to what users want, and implements it. Cinnamon does exactly what I want from a desktop, it is customisable, fast, intuitive, looks great, and yet is also stable and most importantly gets out of the way when I am actually getting on with stuff on the computer, and is really what Gnome 3 should have been.
The Mint crew actually understand the desktop. I read a recent interview with Clem, and he was asked about tablets and phones, to which he replied words to the effect of 'we aren't in the least bit interested in this'. In an era when all we hear from Microsoft is phrases like 'the dashboard of your life' and the use of the term 'apps' to describe the rubbish that is Windows 8, and the constant chattering about this 'Ubuntu phone', from the Shuttleworth camp, whilst they crank out the asthetically stunning, but functionally inferior Unity, the Mint approach seems like the last bastion of sanity.
Come dude. If you are going to write about a subject, at least study it. You don't have to be a encyclopedia, but if you are going to compare GUIs you should have used more than handful and be aware of hundreds. Or if you don't have time to dig into the subject and are just writing up a space saver, let us commetards dig up history. Be honest about your larval stage. We'll be more impressed with your writing, which I'm quite sure is what you and El Reg would prefer.
I just gave nemo a go since I'm never content with any file manager. I don't have GVFS on my system and although nemo runs, some functionality is missing because of the dependencies on GVFS (part of Gnome).
(On my systems, everything is a file in a uniform heirarchy, the way Unix was supposed to be from the start. I don't need no desktop environment attempting to mount devices for me.)
"The result is a setup that gives you access to all your running terminal sessions and media player without needing to shuffle windows or switch workspaces."
Eh, if you're just running terminal sessions and a media player, why not just boot straight into the CLI and get an ipod mini? Get rid of all of the GUI overhead and let your processor run like the wind.
Why people want to fsck up a great OS like Linux by running a crappy GUI on it, I'll never know. GUI is for porn, CLI is for work...
:)
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