Another DE option for Mint 12 - Cinnamon

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cwwgateway

Re: Another DE option for Mint 12 - Cinnamon

Post by cwwgateway »

lurkatron wrote:didnt work,installed cinnamon and cinnamon-session
just left with a blank desktop + conky (and therefore reminds me of unity, difference is that i could rightclick and open a terminal and even type into it)
not sure why, maybe its tied in with gnome-shell and all the extensions ive got or something
Same thing happened to me.

Edit: after I reinstalled into Vbox, it worked. Not sure why though - my other install was just a few days old and I hadn't tweaked anything (not even desktop background). Only difference was I installed the dvd package and the codec package this time versus the dvd package, the codec package, and the mint-meta-mate package last time. And I installed cinnamon while in MATE last time, and from Gnome Classic this time.
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darknetmatrix
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Re: Another DE option for Mint 12 - Cinnamon

Post by darknetmatrix »

Imo this is the future of Linux Mint, really great. After a day of working with 'cinnamon' i stick with it, no more mgse or gnome-shell for me just cinnamon-shell.
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cwwgateway

Re: Another DE option for Mint 12 - Cinnamon

Post by cwwgateway »

drumBE wrote:Imo this is the future of Linux Mint, really great. After a day of working with 'cinnamon' i stick with it, no more mgse or gnome-shell for me just cinnamon-shell.
I agree
Kakao

Re: Another DE option for Mint 12 - Cinnamon

Post by Kakao »

Firt post just to say I'm relieved as I see ligth at the end of the tunnel. Congratulations for Cinnamon!
PietroTux88

Re: Another DE option for Mint 12 - Cinnamon

Post by PietroTux88 »

is possible have for debian testing cinnamon amd64 e i386?
paulo.delavega
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Re: Another DE option for Mint 12 - Cinnamon

Post by paulo.delavega »

Seems very promising :D

I know it's in an early stage, but any chance of creating a suggestions topic? There are a few things from Gnome 2 I miss in MGSE and would love to see in Cinnamon :roll:
oysterboy

Re: Another DE option for Mint 12 - Cinnamon

Post by oysterboy »

Great news!! I was worried about the direction my favorite distribution was taking (honestly LM12 does look weird and inconsistent, Frankenstein-like as someone said), but this sounds and looks positively great. I now have high hopes for the next LTS :D . Thanks clem and the Mint team for the awesome work!!
paul

Re: Another DE option for Mint 12 - Cinnamon

Post by paul »

This is looking more like it!!
Just re-installed Lisa to try cinnamon... looking good!
Must admit though, I'm still missing the compiz stuff, however, this looks like a huge improvement on Gnome shell.
Great work Clem...I'm back on board with Lisa!
z06gal

Re: Another DE option for Mint 12 - Cinnamon

Post by z06gal »

Is it possible yet to auto hide the panel? I assume not as I didn't see a panel listed under the cinnamon settings in the configuration editor :wink:
bimsebasse

Re: Another DE option for Mint 12 - Cinnamon

Post by bimsebasse »

Hmm, still in alpha and I don't like to be so negative, but this gets me worried for Mint :(

- the blossoming new extensions landscape is at once cut off
- the overview just has the window overview - combined with the above the feeling is that of a truncated shell, not an enhanced or simplified one. I can set up a single panel with mint menu, window tabs and workspace switcher in 2 minutes in standard Gnome Shell, and then you have everything (all) Cinnamon has to offer now plus the Gnome Shell bells and whistles of which the possibility to change your desktop with community created extensions is a rather big bell
- super/windowskey opens the menu, and typing in application names filters down to the application you need, but then pressing enter does nothing, doesn't launch the filtered app. You also can't use it for files so it's basically a stunted version of Unity's dash/Gnome Shell's overview search - those who have gotten used to the faster way of launching folders, files and programs than mousing through menus will have to install Synapse or something similar. MGSE felt like Mint admirably trying to bridge a gap between the past and future desktop paradigms, between Gnome 2 and Gnome 3, this comes off just turning to the past.
- the infinity logo was just the Zukitwo theme author's idea of a cool activities button icon - his newest one has a heart - it looks like what it is, a marooned leftover, a pointless fragment, just lingering there. Idea: no logo. Especially as it stays on top of windows, but I guess that can be fixed easily
- my battery icon now rather pointlessly has percentage next to it - not the volume icon though - I guess that's easy to fix too

In order to not just please the Windows 95 desktop diehards at the expense of everyone else and especially all future possible new-comers used to newer desktop paradigms, this needs to open a door to community extensions and, well, add something instead of just presenting "Gnome Shell Minus" with one panel at the bottom. Unless big changes happen, mintifying MATE and Gnome Shell just seems a much better idea than this.
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Re: Another DE option for Mint 12 - Cinnamon

Post by Rehdon »

Here's my take:

- the cinnamon menu feels faster than the standard LM 12 MGSE one
- unpleasant waste of space because of the text labels for 3 buttons on the left (Lock screen, Logout, Quit), also aesthetically unpleasant (application buttons above are 'floating' in a semi-empty container): use tooltips instead
- dynamic workspaces: I don't like them and use the 'Fixed number workspaces' GS extension to have just four; the idea of more than one workspace is new for people coming from Windows, make them dynamic as well and the result will be total newbie confusion
- in overview mode you only see 'Windows' and nothing else: at the moment this feels quite empty, I hope that it will be possible to have the Journal extension working
- same for the dash: I always felt it was overkill to go in overview mode to launch an app, but a configurable (icon size, position, autohide etc.) dash would be a great feature to have; at the moment I use an extension for that, but it only mirrors the LM 12 dash;
- speaking about configuration, I'm one of those guys who likes its panel on top ...

EDIT: well I sure hope that normal GS extensions will be available again! that is, assuming that they're missing in the config tool just for the moment being :)

Rehdon
Last edited by Rehdon on Thu Dec 22, 2011 6:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
iniusman

Re: Another DE option for Mint 12 - Cinnamon

Post by iniusman »

Hi.. cinnamon make me back to Lisa.
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clem
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Re: Another DE option for Mint 12 - Cinnamon

Post by clem »

Hi,

just a few things:

- Thanks for the feedback. I do read it here and on github as well (you can use the "issues" section on https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/issues for this).
- Cinnamon will work with both Cinnamon themes and Gnome Shell themes
- Cinnamon will work with Cinnamon extensions but not with Gnome Shell extensions. It will be easy to port Gnome Shell extensions to Cinnamon of course, and we will also provide additional functionalities to extension developers (the ability for extensions to load themselves in a particular order for instance).
- In terms of configuration, we're currently looking at the best ways to present them to users, but we do plan to make a configurable desktop. Gnome Shell is "customizable" by extensions. That means developers can customize it and users can apply these customizations. Cinnamon will be both customizable by developers extensions, and by user configuration. A few examples of configuration are: auto-hiding the panel, placing the panel at the top/bottom, selecting themes, most of what is in Gnome Tweak Tool, options for newly developed features... etc.
- You'll see themes selection and better panel launchers in the next version, that's being worked on right now :)
Image
LexMK

Re: Another DE option for Mint 12 - Cinnamon

Post by LexMK »

Hi Clem.

Thaks for Cinnamon, good job as always. I have some questions about what is going to be on Cinnamon and what's not:
- Will be possible to have more than one panel, like, one at the top and one at the bottom with different functions/launchers?
- Movable panel elements, yes or no?
- Adding more launchers other than terminal and desktop
- Changing the menu icon
- Online profile like in MGSE. I think that if developed right and with more options other than Google+ it could become a really nice feature.
- Some integrated mail client/trayicon

Again, good job. I really like Cinnamon and I'll wait to see what kind of DE is going to be.
Rehdon
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Re: Another DE option for Mint 12 - Cinnamon

Post by Rehdon »

Hello Clem
clem wrote:Hi,

just a few things:

- Thanks for the feedback. I do read it here and on github as well (you can use the "issues" section on https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/issues for this).
Yep, I read about it, but I'll be using that for more to the point stuff, so far I just gave my first impressions about Cinnamon.
clem wrote:- Cinnamon will work with both Cinnamon themes and Gnome Shell themes
Cool.
clem wrote:- Cinnamon will work with Cinnamon extensions but not with Gnome Shell extensions. It will be easy to port Gnome Shell extensions to Cinnamon of course, and we will also provide additional functionalities to extension developers (the ability for extensions to load themselves in a particular order for instance).
Hmm, this doesn't sound too good. I'm pretty sure that there are technical reasons to do this, but please consider that 1) it fragments the (already small) Gnome Shell dev community 2) no matter how easy it will be, there will be some GS extension developer who won't port them to Cinnamon (and vice versa, possibly) just because they don't want to maintain two different versions of the same extension.

IMHO keeping Cinnamon 100% Gnome 3 compatible, like LM 12 MGSE, is a fundamental goal, both to gain acceptance and to take advantage of future developments by GSE writers.
clem wrote:- In terms of configuration, we're currently looking at the best ways to present them to users, but we do plan to make a configurable desktop. Gnome Shell is "customizable" by extensions. That means developers can customize it and users can apply these customizations. Cinnamon will be both customizable by developers extensions, and by user configuration. A few examples of configuration are: auto-hiding the panel, placing the panel at the top/bottom, selecting themes, most of what is in Gnome Tweak Tool, options for newly developed features... etc.
I really hoped to read something like that, because extensions alone really aren't the way to go, at least for less "technical" people.
clem wrote:- You'll see themes selection and better panel launchers in the next version, that's being worked on right now :)
Keep up the good work :)

Rehdon
Daniel4lm

Re: Another DE option for Mint 12 - Cinnamon

Post by Daniel4lm »

Rehdon wrote:
clem wrote:- Cinnamon will work with Cinnamon extensions but not with Gnome Shell extensions. It will be easy to port Gnome Shell extensions to Cinnamon of course, and we will also provide additional functionalities to extension developers (the ability for extensions to load themselves in a particular order for instance).
Hmm, this doesn't sound too good. I'm pretty sure that there are technical reasons to do this, but please consider that 1) it fragments the (already small) Gnome Shell dev community 2) no matter how easy it will be, there will be some GS extension developer who won't port them to Cinnamon (and vice versa, possibly) just because they don't want to maintain two different versions of the same extension.

IMHO keeping Cinnamon 100% Gnome 3 compatible, like LM 12 MGSE, is a fundamental goal, both to gain acceptance and to take advantage of future developments by GSE writers.
Do not worry too much, because it Cinnamon is not much different from Gnome shell. The thing is in some parts of the source code such as

Code: Select all

const Shell = imports.gi.Shell; -> const Cinnamon = imports.gi.Cinnamon;
, and so on. Anyone who knows Java Script programming can easily transfer the source code from the Gnome shell in Cinnamon shell.
sb56637

Re: Another DE option for Mint 12 - Cinnamon

Post by sb56637 »

Very interesting. I'm not a Mint user mainly because I need the YaST configuration tools in openSUSE. But I'm always following the progress of Mint.

My biggest question is: Will this work without 3D drivers? Can it be made to act like Gnome2 in the sense that the desktop shell is always the same regardless of 2D/3D support, and those who want can enable 3D effects, and those who don't want them can use the same shell instead of an unloved stepchild simplistic "fallback" mode?
Spiron

Re: Another DE option for Mint 12 - Cinnamon

Post by Spiron »

I just have a quick question for clem, are you planning to support compiz as window manager or just stay with mutter as GS does??
oldrocker99

Re: Another DE option for Mint 12 - Cinnamon

Post by oldrocker99 »

I'm running it right now and like it quite a bit, certainly better than MSGE (so far) :D . I'm certainly eager to see how it develops.
sprintcowboy
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Re: Another DE option for Mint 12 - Cinnamon

Post by sprintcowboy »

Clem
The last update on the cinnamon menu that I got the scroll bar looks much better.
Could be a little thiner but still looks good.

Could Alt-Tab show all windows on all workspaces.
I think this would be faster than going to each workspace to see what windows are there.
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