Why do you use Cinnamon?

[elemenophee]

After two days using Cinnamon I've been forced to leave it.

- Basic actions such as shortcuts with SUPER, or Print Screen don't work.
- Print screen don't work at all. It takes a picture of the system state time ago.
- Full screen videos from websites such as Youtube or Vimeo don't work.

The only good point compared to Gnome Shell is that in Gnome Shell when I want open more than a nautilus windows, sometimes it doesn't open it and I have to keep trying.

Reading the forum I just read XX doesn't work, YY neither....

So I'm just wondering, why you use it? For me it's simply too buggy.

THIS ISN'T A CINNAMON VS GNOME TOPIC, I'M JUST WONDERING WHY PEOPLE USE IT, WHICH PROS THEY HAVE FOR CHOOSE IT INSTEAD OF OTHER

[telenux]

Print Scrn and full screen youtube works for me. But, sound doesn't. I wouldn't worry too much. Linux Mint is overrated anyway and the forum admins are too scared to have constructive criticism.

[zerozero]

elemenophee,
let me guess (no probably i don't need to guess, you are giving all the information) you have amd/ati graphic cards in that system?
well, it's more amd to blame than cinnamon, you know?
cinnamon has none of those problems with nvidia or intel but disregarding the fact that you are an amd/ati paying customer they keep releasing broken drivers (not broken for all but almost) for its customers

have constructive criticism.

the last thing you did was constructive criticism:
- sound doesn't work? when? live? installed? what kind of card you have?
- vlc doesn't work? live? installed? read this http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_debian.php

[bimsebasse]

On my hardware Cinnamon is the fastest of the big Gnome 3 shells (maybe the SolusOS tweaked fallback session would be faster, haven't tried lately). All those things that don't work for you work for me, except maybe using Super for custom shortcuts but afaik that's inherited from gnome shell.

[exploder]

Cinnamon runs like lightning on my main desktop with NVidea graphics. My laptop had issues but the ATI drivers were the problem, not Cinnamon.

[sobrus]

I can tell why I'm NOT using it.

While it is certailny eye candy, sleek and modern ,it is also:

- not as eye candy as compiz ...
- nowhere as stable as mate (started crashing)
- not working with ati fglrx drivers (i'm still stuck with catalyst 12.2 because it's the last fully working on LMDE as for now). This has beed fixed in newer drivers, though.
- not as comfortable for me to use as MATE+Compiz
- it is still under very heavy developement, applications and features come and go, you never know what to expect. Nautilus today, Nemo tomorrow.
- it is just add on to gnome shell - so it feels a bit inconsistent (for example you have separate settings for both cinnamon and gnome)
- while new applets are nice, and some are better than in MATE, installation is a bit tricky and not user friendly at all (copying files to hidden folders, running install scripts etc).


That said, I'm not ruling out the possibility to use it in future, because it is very promising.
I hope that some compiz features like wobbly windows, desktop cube, window alt drag and shade, will be ported to cinnamon. And the applets should be installable via nice gui, with auto update feature.
I think it will be VERY good DE in a year or so. But MATE is not standing still too, they have even plans to port it to GTK3.
Both Cinnamon and Mate are supported by Mint Team. Both receive user input. It will be probably hard to decide...

[nomko]

- not as eye candy as compiz ...

Is this a real necessary for any DE???

- nowhere as stable as mate (started crashing)

- not working with ati fglrx drivers (i'm still stuck with catalyst 12.2 because it's the last fully working on LMDE as for now). This has beed fixed in newer drivers, though.

More Mint users have experiences with ATI/AMD hardware and drivers. This is a know problem which is not related to Cinnamon since Cinnamon and Cinnamon developers are not responsible for the development of ATI/AMD drivers. So don't start complaining about this issue and blaim Cinnamon for it. It is really not their fault!

- not as comfortable for me to use as MATE+Compiz

That's a personal experience, not an universal experience.

- it is still under very heavy developement, applications and features come and go, you never know what to expect

Every DE is under development. Just take a look at the first KDE version and the current version, they are not comparible. That is called development! Not a valid point IMHO.

- it is just add on to gnome shell - so it feels a bit inconsistent (for example you have separate settings for both cinnamon and gnome)

Do you think Unity is a whole new independend Desktop Environment? Take Unity also as a add-on to the Gnome-shell and you have the same as with Cinnamon. Just an overlay of the Gnome-shell.

- while new applets are nice, and some are better than in MATE, installation is a bit tricky and not user friendly at all (copying files to hidden folders, running install scripts etc).
Ideally, the applets should be installable via gui, with auto update feature.

Duh.....same as with the Gnome-shell. What's your point here?

That said, I'm not ruling out the possibility to use it in future, because it is very promising.

Really?

[sobrus]

Is this a real necessary for any DE???

It isn't, who said it is necessary? Now go and use CDE.

More Mint users have experiences with ATI/AMD hardware and drivers. This is a know problem which is not related to Cinnamon since Cinnamon and Cinnamon developers are not responsible for the development of ATI/AMD drivers. So don't start complaining about this issue and blaim Cinnamon for it. It is really not their fault!

I gave a reasons why I am not using Cinnamon. This is the question OP asked. I don't use it because it doesn't work with my hardware/software configuration.
Neither on my desktop (HD5670) nor low power server (old VIA Unichrome). And guess what.. MATE works on both.
Simple as that.

That's a personal experience, not an universal experience.

Of course it is personal. What other experience matters for me? Read the question OP asked again. And again.

Every DE is under development. Just take a look at the first KDE version and the current version, they are not comparible. That is called development! Not a valid point IMHO.

Cinnamon is in early stages of developement. Programmers are making fundamental decisions about it's future shape, what to fork, what to take from gnome. How will it look, how will it work.
Almost every week there's something new. Revolution not evolution (for example Nemo). It will stabilze over time.

Do you think Unity is a whole new independend Desktop Environment? Take Unity also as a add-on to the Gnome-shell and you have the same as with Cinnamon. Just an overlay of the Gnome-shell.

Where did I say ANYTHING about Unity? Who cares about unity in this thread anyway? Unity is (for me of course) just a bit less crappy than GS is.

Duh.....same as with the Gnome-shell. What's your point here?

Cinnamon is going to be better, isn't it? So nice GUI for applets won't hurt. Especially if it is going to be user friendly.

Really?

Yeah, really

[Orbmiser]

Hmmm well seems comes down to individual system and individual preferences.
As always! Mine older 4years dual core AMD II X2 250 4Gb 4350 ati graphics card dual lcd setup. Running 14RC 1.6 cinnamon.

Sleek & Modern more elegant is just fine for me. And does have some workspace switcher corner. More coming
As they say Too Much Candy can make you sick.

On Cinnamon give a 10 for stability 1 issues 0 crashes 0 hang-ups. CPU idle runs around 5-10% mark. Am using the Gallium 0.4 RV710 Standard graphics drivers without issue. Tho haven't tried specific ati drivers yet. As Cinnamon 2D takes me into maxing out both cores running it.

"not as comfortable for me to use as MATE+Compiz" says more about personal experiences and habits than actual Desktop use.

"it is still under very heavy developement, applications and features come and go, you never know what to expect"

True enough and yep that is a concern. But don't think it will be extreme about removing so much as adding to quickly making system become unstable is more of a concern to me.

"while new applets are nice, and some are better than in MATE, installation is a bit tricky and not user friendly at all (copying files to hidden folders, running install scripts etc).
Ideally, the applets should be installable via gui, with auto update feature."

Not sure about the differences here as haven't used mate extensively enough. But added a couple of applets from the applets
And not much easier than.
"To install an applet: Download it and decompress it in ~/.local/share/cinnamon/applets." from their applet page. And no problems running .install scripts. And then they are there in Cinnamon>applets ready to be clicked on.

Installable Gui and auto-updating agree but that could be said for Themes also which is a pretty gludgy way to get themes installed.

It is promising for the future and for many of Us the future is now. Like I mentioned Stable and fast modern in an elegant sort of way. My biggest issue seems to be applets. On startup,Logging In or Reboot sometimes a few of the applet icons go transparent or are blocky green. And restarting cinnamon is required to clear it up. Which is the 1 issue marked above.

I could probably find others the more I delve into the system. But am working with an RC after all.

And the only true way to see what WM or DE is for you is to try them out. As just way to many variables in system components support to personal requirements and individual preferences,biases to make much of informed decision for your needs and personal preferences.

"That's why you will always see I like Mate, I like Cinnamon, I like LMDE, I like xfce. Cinnamon is Crap!,Wake up smell the roses Cinnamon users it's junk. Xfce is the only true way to go."

Fanatics are always fun to read. But unfortunately for the newbie to linux makes for a harder time assessing which distro is for them and their needs.

As sobrus pointed out he tried it and for personal reasons it wasn't for him at this point.
Which is fine as at least he gave it a try and wasn't for him. And kept the gate open a tad for future consideration.

So the secret is take all our opinions and experiences with a heavy dose of seasoning. Goes down better that way.
Then download as many different distro's Live CD's and give them a whirl. It's not a contest or a race. Take yer time evaluating each meeting or exceeding your particular needs & preferences.

I Use Cinnamon as It Works for My Needs & on My System .
.

[sobrus]

I just would like to remind, that OP asked for personal experience.
So we all are talking about personal experience, and this is not another MATE vs Cinnamon thread.
I gave a reasons why I am using MATE instead of Cinnamon, but I didn't say anything about which one is universally better.
I even wrote "for me" where it was necessary (it is more comfortable FOR ME) to avoid another war.

Maybe my personal experience will change once I will be able to run Cinnamon outside VirtualBox.

PS. Installing using bash scripts etc makes no problem for me, especially since I am programmer myself, MCS with 20+ years experience starting from Commodore 64 (and yes, maybe that's why I prefer MATE? I dunno).
But still it isn't something I would expect from modern and friendly DE in year 2012.

PS2. Compiz is not only eyecandy. In fact, my desktop is not very "candy" (I rather want it to be ellegant in Cinnamon/Gnome3 way).
But it has also extremely handy window handling abilities via plugins (just look at CCSM), and it's very fast and reliable.
After using it for 2 years, every other window manager, including Muffin, Marco and xfwm4, feels a bit constraining. MATE without Compiz is just half of fun.
Not to mention Compiz actually uses way less CPU time than non-opengl managers do(!)....

[elemenophee]

elemenophee,
let me guess (no probably i don't need to guess, you are giving all the information) you have amd/ati graphic cards in that system?
well, it's more amd to blame than cinnamon, you know?
cinnamon has none of those problems with nvidia or intel but disregarding the fact that you are an amd/ati paying customer they keep releasing broken drivers (not broken for all but almost) for its customers

No offense but if other DE's haven't those problems with such hardware, this is a problem of Cinnamon and not about the hardware.

I have I5 2500K and ATI HD 5770 (tried both Catalyst and Gallium, actually with Catalyst 12.10)

[sobrus]

Gnome's Mutter had long time trouble with running on Catalyst drivers.
This have been fixed since probably 12.4, but as far as I know, occassional glitches, artifacts and instability occur.
Since Cinnamon and Muffin are based on Gnome, it shares it's problems on Catalyst.
Maybe even has its own quirks already, as it gains some unique code.

This isn't of course Cinnamon's fault, it suffers because of poor gnome3 and catalyst quality and compatibility.
And it should be solved as the quality improves.
But for now Gnome3 or Cinnamon doesn't work very well on ATI Hardware, while it works perfectly good on nvidia and intel.

[elemenophee]

Gnome's Mutter had long time trouble with running on Catalyst drivers.
This have been fixed since probably 12.4, but as far as I know, occassional glitches, artifacts and instability occur.
Since Cinnamon and Muffin are based on Gnome, it shares it's problems on Catalyst.
Maybe even has its own quirks already, as it gains some unique code.

This isn't of course Cinnamon's fault, it suffers because of poor gnome3 and catalyst quality. And it should be solved as the quality improves.
But for now Gnome3 or Cinnamon doesn't work very well on ATI Hardware.

I use Gnome 3 without any problem.

[sobrus]

So the problem is indeed caused by Cinnamon (I'm ruling Catalyst out since it doesn't work on Gallium either, and they don't share any codebase).
I guess you have report a bug and use something different for now.

On my machine (LMDE+HD5670+Catalyst 12.2) it worked, abeit choppy and could crash. It worked quite good on 12.6 until it stopped working at all (crash at startup, but strangely it worked when launched from bash under MATE - lol). Messing with startup programs didn't help, so I removed it (until Cinnamon 2.2 arrives ).

Cinnamon is in my opinion somewhere in 'alpha' state. It may or may not work, if you need stability use something other....
(And gnome 3 enters beta and is more and more... useless . It will become perfectly unusable once it hits 4.0 - just my 3 cents)

[zerozero]

Cinnamon is in my opinion somewhere in 'alpha' state. It may or may not work, if you need stability use something other....gnome 3 enters beta and is more and more... useless

Clem usually recommends mate for a couple reasons:
- it's a stabilized project (different from stable: cinnamon is stable is certain hardware)
- works well in all hardware combination (cinnamon requires 3D - the 2D session in the newest versions is clearly classed as debugging purpose and not for every day use)

[zerozero]

elemenophee,
let me guess (no probably i don't need to guess, you are giving all the information) you have amd/ati graphic cards in that system?
well, it's more amd to blame than cinnamon, you know?
cinnamon has none of those problems with nvidia or intel but disregarding the fact that you are an amd/ati paying customer they keep releasing broken drivers (not broken for all but almost) for its customers

No offense but if other DE's haven't those problems with such hardware, this is a problem of Cinnamon and not about the hardware.

I have I5 2500K and ATI HD 5770 (tried both Catalyst and Gallium, actually with Catalyst 12.10)

i guess that you have hybrid cards because the i5 has a intel gpu already.
what's the output of

Code: Select all

lspci -nn | grep VGA

[Bonsaii]

Like bimsebasse, I experience Cinnamon as the fastest
of the three desktop managers (Gnome3, Mate, Cinnamon).

The mix of eye candy, usability and stability (!) is amazing.
On my hardware there are no crashes whatsoever and after
changing the sound card everything works brilliantly.

Granted, I am neither a gamer, nor a graphic designer.
My main usage is plain office work. Also, I removed all
Mate packets and Mono. I am trying to run a system
with minimal "baggage".

I have tried/worked with Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu,
PuppyLinux, DamnSmallLinux and Kanotix.

In terms of user friendliness, speed, and ease of use
Cinnamon beats all of the above for my needs.

Needless to say, I found and find this forum at least
as friendly and helpful as the ubuntu forums.

[elemenophee]

elemenophee,
let me guess (no probably i don't need to guess, you are giving all the information) you have amd/ati graphic cards in that system?
well, it's more amd to blame than cinnamon, you know?
cinnamon has none of those problems with nvidia or intel but disregarding the fact that you are an amd/ati paying customer they keep releasing broken drivers (not broken for all but almost) for its customers

No offense but if other DE's haven't those problems with such hardware, this is a problem of Cinnamon and not about the hardware.

I have I5 2500K and ATI HD 5770 (tried both Catalyst and Gallium, actually with Catalyst 12.10)

i guess that you have hybrid cards because the i5 has a intel gpu already.
what's the output of

Code: Select all

lspci -nn | grep VGA

I don't know why you keep trying to show that Cinnamon is perfect and the problem is the hardware... It's hard to admit that it is far from stable for daily use?

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Juniper [Radeon HD 5700 Series] [1002:68b8]

[sobrus]

MATE runs faster with compiz than without it.
Marco is still (as far as I know) stacked window manager. And it requires lots of cpu power to redraw windows.
Hardware accelerated compositing managers like Muffin in Cinnamon are faster and offload CPU using GPU.

For example moving large windows over FullHD desktop can use easily as much as 50% of one of my cores (Q8300@3.3Ghz) using for example xfwm4 (xfce window manager) or marco (mate window manager).
Even thouth xfce is designed for slower machines....
The same operation using compiz (doesn't matter whether you are using xfce or mate) with transparent wobbly windows uses about 5-7% (probably most of this is wobbly windows geometry computation).
No window redraw occur since all windows are just rendered as textures from pixmaps, and GPU fillrate is massive nowadays. Modern GPU can redraw whole screen with textures thousands times a second easily.

This can explain why cinnamon feels faster, it has hardware accelerated window manager out of the box.
I hope Compiz will be eventually forked for Mate.

[killer de bug]

It's hard to admit that it is far from stable for daily use?

Oh yeahhh ! Because Cinnamon 1.6 is rocking stable in LMDE. I didn't had any of the problems you described. You should start considering you're wrong