Feedback On 13 Cinnamon - Hopefully We'll See Changed?

[DasFox]

THANKS for putting out 13 Cinnamon.

I wanted to give some feedback and hopefully these things can be changed, and if there are already options to do so, then please forgive my ignorance because I didn't notice where...

1. Menu is just to BIG/TALL, would certainly be nice to have a much smaller menu, or at least the option to adjust it to personal likes, for me, it's just to big and makes me feel like this is 'Computer For Dummies'. Big in my mind is clunky and stupid looking...

2. Same thing goes for the WiFi menu, again, way to big when you click on 'More' and get a HUGE menu that fills up the entire screen, so this would be really great if it followed footsteps like Windows 7 with a SMALL window that you can simply scroll up and down in.

3. The panel should be allowed to be right clicked and adjusted, besides having the UP arrow, which typically represented 'Hidden Objects' on the panel coming from the Windows world, so seeing a UP arrow doesn't make sense. So there should also be the ability to right click the panel and get the same menu. I'd rather remove that arrow and would prefer right clicking the panel instead.

4. The Network OSD popup window is to wide when you've connected to a VPN and you can't read everything it says after you've made a successful connection so this needs to be made smaller with all the words readable in the popup...

5. IMPORTANT -- When you've connected to a VPN, either Wired, or Wireless the network icon on the panel should have a LOCK on it so that you know you are on this connection and the lock dissappears when you've lost the connection, as well as a popup OSD to notify of the lost connection. Not having a lock on the panel icon I feel is not a good idea, this helps people to know that they're on the secure connection, to make sure things are working as should. PLEASE FIX THIS.

6. Software Manager - You have to 'Double Click' to view items, this use to be done as a Single Click and that is how it should be, not double. Also after you install something that page/section should reload and show it's installed but it doesn't, you have to go out of the section you are in and then back to it after installing something to see that it was installed, this to me is a really bad bug, which makes you feel like something hasn't installed properly, this behaviour needs to be changed, along with the double clicking...

7. System Settings - Privacy, is this like Mint's version of 'BleachBit'? http://bleachbit.sourceforge.net/ If this is what this is then I'd recommend that Mint have installed by default BleachBit, it's also a great application for cleaning up the system in many ways too...

8. IMPORTANT UFW should be enabled by default, this makes no sense to have a firewall in Mint and it's not on, at least on my box I had to run it as; sudo ufw enable. Also I understand what Gufw is, but it's still shown by name in the GUI as 'Firewall', LOOK at the top of the GUI window... So let's think about that for a moment, to most newbies who know that ufw is on and when they open Gufw and the status says off, that will make no sense for people and the status by default should say on and it's not, after all it is the front end to ufw so this only makes sense it's like this...


THE BIGGIE OF ALL THAT REALLY NEEDS TO BE DONE!!!

---> Boot Splash, people have been talking about this for a LONG time, the stupidity of Ubuntu to just make nothing, sit and stare at BLACKNESS is total stupidity, even dopey Windows shows you a little bit of something going on with the bars moving in XP below the logo or the animated Winodws logo in Win7...

It's time for Linux Mint to start breaking rank as it's evident here going on it's own with Cinnamon and start creating your own boot splash to make this OS look more professional, also a Grub Image for the Menu would look better too, just looking at black is great for us Geeks, for the newbies I think it presents a very cold and unprofessional unfinshed look....

Cinnamon, is also not stable, this should of never been put into Mint until it was, it seems as though the developer(s) thought so, but I beg to differ. In my 12 years of running Linux, most of that time in Slackware, I'd like to think I have some experience in this matter, and only using the system on personal home computers, in all those years I've rarely had system/desktop lockups, in fact I can just about count all of them and it was probably not even 3-4.

Within 2 weeks of using 13 with Cinnamon, I've had the desktop lock up completely on me two times. I also wasn't doing anything unsual, or heavy intensive. The first time it locked up when I first started running a video on VLC and the second time, trying to open a new tab/site in Firefox... Complete desktop lockups where you have to shutdown a system should not be occuring on supported hardware when you're not even putting much of a load on the system. Doing some heavy 3D modeling or CAD is one thing, but VLC and Firefox, no way, totally unacceptable!





THANKS

[spartan7]

I have to agree. I have been very dissatisfied with Mint 13 Cinnamon stability. I have green window border pixelation. I get blue screen without login popup when I try to re login after a time of not being at the pc and the pc locking up. I do think that Mint 13 LTS should have been am only MATE version and save Cinnamon for the next release. I do have to say I will be removing Mint Cinnamon and installing MATE and see how it goes.

I also have a GTX 295 NVIDIA Card and this is running on an i7 and the responsiveness of the system was pretty bad. Not utterly slow but for someone that came from Mint 12 very noticeable.

I have had to Ctrl+Alt+Backspace 4+ times now because of lockups. I thought it an NVidia Driver issue but it does happen with OS drivers as well. The blue screen at login issue disappeared though when using the OS NVidia drivers.

[altair4]

Within 2 weeks of using 13 with Cinnamon, I've had the desktop lock up completely on me two times. I also wasn't doing anything unsual, or heavy intensive. The first time it locked up when I first started running a video on VLC and the second time, trying to open a new tab/site in Firefox... Complete desktop lockups where you have to shutdown a system should not be occuring on supported hardware when you're not even putting much of a load on the system. Doing some heavy 3D modeling or CAD is one thing, but VLC and Firefox, no way, totally unacceptable!

I am not a defender of Mint and although I was using different specific applications than you described here I also experienced freezes in the first 2 weeks or so. I'm talking about complete freezes - hard reboot type of freezes.

Here's the difference though: I use Xubuntu 12.04. The one thing they have in common is Ubuntu 12.04. Not everything you are experiencing is Mint's fault and it cannot be fixed by Mint.

Remember Ubuntu's release philosophy: Whatever sticks to the wall at 6 PM on Tuesday gets shipped. After the first 2 or 3 weeks there have been a flood of updates and things have improved.

[cwwgateway]

THANKS for putting out 13 Cinnamon.

I wanted to give some feedback and hopefully these things can be changed, and if there are already options to do so, then please forgive my ignorance because I didn't notice where...

1. Menu is just to BIG/TALL, would certainly be nice to have a much smaller menu, or at least the option to adjust it to personal likes, for me, it's just to big and makes me feel like this is 'Computer For Dummies'. Big in my mind is clunky and stupid looking...
That's your personal feeling. From what I've found, some people like the menu more than other menus and some like it less. Here's an applet for a different menu - http://cinnamon-spices.linuxmint.com/applets/view/46
2. Same thing goes for the WiFi menu, again, way to big when you click on 'More' and get a HUGE menu that fills up the entire screen, so this would be really great if it followed footsteps like Windows 7 with a SMALL window that you can simply scroll up and down in.
I disagree here. I don't know what your screen resolution or size is, but on my screen it is not only fairly small, but it's also not much bigger than the Windows 7 wifi menu. Also, I really don't like the Windows 7 wifi menu
3. The panel should be allowed to be right clicked and adjusted, besides having the UP arrow, which typically represented 'Hidden Objects' on the panel coming from the Windows world, so seeing a UP arrow doesn't make sense. So there should also be the ability to right click the panel and get the same menu. I'd rather remove that arrow and would prefer right clicking the panel instead.
I'm pretty sure this wasn't a design decision. I think this will be implemented eventually and the up arrow is basically a stopgap measure. There are plenty of different settings applets here - http://cinnamon-spices.linuxmint.com/applets
4. The Network OSD popup window is to wide when you've connected to a VPN and you can't read everything it says after you've made a successful connection so this needs to be made smaller with all the words readable in the popup...
Ubuntu's fault, but I guess it could be improved.
5. IMPORTANT -- When you've connected to a VPN, either Wired, or Wireless the network icon on the panel should have a LOCK on it so that you know you are on this connection and the lock dissappears when you've lost the connection, as well as a popup OSD to notify of the lost connection. Not having a lock on the panel icon I feel is not a good idea, this helps people to know that they're on the secure connection, to make sure things are working as should. PLEASE FIX THIS.
Basically they are trying to get all of the really important deal braker features/things (like no memory leaks) before they work on smaller things. Honestly, I have no need for a lock icon. Isn't the wifi symbol enough? I don't move much, so this doesn't affect me (my wifi signal is always there).
6. Software Manager - You have to 'Double Click' to view items, this use to be done as a Single Click and that is how it should be, not double. Also after you install something that page/section should reload and show it's installed but it doesn't, you have to go out of the section you are in and then back to it after installing something to see that it was installed, this to me is a really bad bug, which makes you feel like something hasn't installed properly, this behaviour needs to be changed, along with the double clicking...
I agree, and I don't use the linux mint software center. You can use the ubuntu one or the deepin one. Also, this has nothing to do with Cinnamon.
7. System Settings - Privacy, is this like Mint's version of 'BleachBit'? http://bleachbit.sourceforge.net/ If this is what this is then I'd recommend that Mint have installed by default BleachBit, it's also a great application for cleaning up the system in many ways too...
Privacy was developed by Ubuntu, and it is Ubuntu's app. It was just passed down to linux mint.
8. IMPORTANT UFW should be enabled by default, this makes no sense to have a firewall in Mint and it's not on, at least on my box I had to run it as; sudo ufw enable. Also I understand what Gufw is, but it's still shown by name in the GUI as 'Firewall', LOOK at the top of the GUI window... So let's think about that for a moment, to most newbies who know that ufw is on and when they open Gufw and the status says off, that will make no sense for people and the status by default should say on and it's not, after all it is the front end to ufw so this only makes sense it's like this...
I guess I agree, but if you are a real newbie, do you know what ufw is?

THE BIGGIE OF ALL THAT REALLY NEEDS TO BE DONE!!!

---> Boot Splash, people have been talking about this for a LONG time, the stupidity of Ubuntu to just make nothing, sit and stare at BLACKNESS is total stupidity, even dopey Windows shows you a little bit of something going on with the bars moving in XP below the logo or the animated Winodws logo in Win7...

It's time for Linux Mint to start breaking rank as it's evident here going on it's own with Cinnamon and start creating your own boot splash to make this OS look more professional, also a Grub Image for the Menu would look better too, just looking at black is great for us Geeks, for the newbies I think it presents a very cold and unprofessional unfinshed look....
This actually has nothing to do with Ubuntu, as Ubuntu has a boot splash. This is actually that Clem thinks that Plymouth is very unreliable - on some machines it looks really good, but on others it looks horrible. He wants one unified experience for everyone.
Cinnamon, is also not stable, this should of never been put into Mint until it was, it seems as though the developer(s) thought so, but I beg to differ. In my 12 years of running Linux, most of that time in Slackware, I'd like to think I have some experience in this matter, and only using the system on personal home computers, in all those years I've rarely had system/desktop lockups, in fact I can just about count all of them and it was probably not even 3-4.

Within 2 weeks of using 13 with Cinnamon, I've had the desktop lock up completely on me two times. I also wasn't doing anything unsual, or heavy intensive. The first time it locked up when I first started running a video on VLC and the second time, trying to open a new tab/site in Firefox... Complete desktop lockups where you have to shutdown a system should not be occuring on supported hardware when you're not even putting much of a load on the system. Doing some heavy 3D modeling or CAD is one thing, but VLC and Firefox, no way, totally unacceptable!
I've never had Cinnamon crash since around 1.3. However, I'm pretty sure that the next version will have some stability improvements. You can look at the current changes here - https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/commit/cbef26cbf195ff1688d32a72647e39dfa93fae88 (you have to scroll past the pink stuff).




THANKS

My responses are in color

[altair4]

@DasFox, stumbled on this while looking for something else:

Ubuntu 12.04 completely freezes frequently: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... bug/993187

This bug is about a complete system lock-up. No other TTYs can be started. Mouse doesn't move. Keyboard doesn't react. The only solution is hard reset.
Seems to happen on a variety of configurations, including nVidia, ATI and Intel graphics.

Of particular interest to those who are fascinated by the Ubuntu bug reporting process, the bug is labeled as High / Critical in importance, Assigned to no one, and it's current status is : "Won't Fix"

So unless you can figure out a way to isolate the Ubuntu base from the Cinnamon addition to determine if the problem is Cinnamon alone and then file a bug report to Mint, your fate is in the hands of Ubuntu.

[Oscar799]

I totally agree with u on the splash screen issue. It makes Mint look clumsy and unprofessional!! I believe Maya Cinnamon is a hasty job!! Hope Linux Mint Natacha (the codename I suggest for the coming release) comes with a pre-installed fullscreen green splash and a beautiful grub background image!!!

[cwwgateway]

I totally agree with u on the splash screen issue. It makes Mint look clumsy and unprofessional!! I believe Maya Cinnamon is a hasty job!! Hope Linux Mint Natacha (the codename I suggest for the coming release) comes with a pre-installed fullscreen green splash and a beautiful grub background image!!!

It may seem unprofessional to you, and I partially agree (I want a splash screen, although I don't think it looks unprofessional without one). However, it was the opposite reasoning actually - plymouth looks great on some computers but on others it looks horrible and incredibly unprofessional (my guess is that would happen if your graphics card drivers weren't working well - its happened to me). Also, to say it was hasty is wrong because they included a splash, they just didn't make it default. They even put instructions in the release notes on how to add the linux mint splash screen. I'm crossing my fingers that LM 14 will have one because Ubuntu 12.10 will use a system compositor which should help with boot flickering, etc.

[DasFox]

My bad before, I should of said it would be nice to have an option to adjust the Menu & Network Menu is all, it certainly depends on your screen size, on 15" laptops it's HUGE!

UFW; https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UFW - I personally don't get why it's not enabled by default to give someone basic protection... If you're not a newbie you're going to figure it out, but for those starting out, they might assume it's just on and messing with Gufw further confuses the issue, because with ufw enabled Gufw will say the status is Off until you unlock it. The Status should always say On, and unlocking it should only mean to give you access to adjust it, just because it's locked the Status should not be saying OFF, otherwise it gives the impression that it's not enabled and that's not correct, it's just locked...

[xenopeek]

While I agree ufw should be enabled by default, it would block some basic functionality for users on the local network. Specifically, it would block Samba and Avahi (zeroconf); limiting interoperability with other computers (like file and printer sharing) and disabling automatic discovery of network services. On a home network with a broadband connection access to these services from the Internet would normally be blocked by the firewall in in your broadband modem (and Avahi only listens on the local network, so it is not at risk on a home network). On a public network, like on a WiFi hotspot, you of course don't have that protection and hence at least on mobile devices ufw should be enabled by default. (Though on a public network I would be more worried about spying, hijacking and mitm attacks on my Internet traffic...)

Full disclosure, I always disable Samba and Avahi anyway See steps here: viewtopic.php?f=90&t=82044&p=476278#p476278.

Other services are running out-of-the-box on a new install of Linux Mint 13, specifically cupsd, dhclient, and dnsmasq. Both cupsd and dnsmasq by default only listen on localhost, so are not at risk. dhclient listens on the local network, so is not at risk on a home network. It is needed on a public network for DHCP to function, to get an IP address. As such, ufw allows DHCP traffic anyway.

[DasFox]

While I agree ufw should be enabled by default, it would block some basic functionality for users on the local network. Specifically, it would block Samba and Avahi (zeroconf); limiting interoperability with other computers (like file and printer sharing) and disabling automatic discovery of network services. On a home network with a broadband connection access to these services from the Internet would normally be blocked by the firewall in in your broadband modem (and Avahi only listens on the local network, so it is not at risk on a home network). On a public network, like on a WiFi hotspot, you of course don't have that protection and hence at least on mobile devices ufw should be enabled by default. (Though on a public network I would be more worried about spying, hijacking and mitm attacks on my Internet traffic...)

Full disclosure, I always disable Samba and Avahi anyway See steps here: viewtopic.php?f=90&t=82044&p=476278#p476278.

Other services are running out-of-the-box on a new install of Linux Mint 13, specifically cupsd, dhclient, and dnsmasq. Both cupsd and dnsmasq by default only listen on localhost, so are not at risk. dhclient listens on the local network, so is not at risk on a home network. It is needed on a public network for DHCP to function, to get an IP address. As such, ufw allows DHCP traffic anyway.

If it's a KNOWN, for what UFW might block out the box, as you've suggested, I'm not sure why certain rules can't be added in by default to deal with these things and if it does block then it's simply up to the end user to know and deal with correctly, at least with some README information on the computer to help, so to make this process simpler to deal with. I still don't think it should be much of a problem...

[Seally]

Actually, the biggest thing I would like to see changed is a GUI-based option to turn on numlock at login. This 'minor' problem is actually very annoying, as the current "install numlockx and add startup script to /etc/mdm/Init/Default" feels more like a workaround than a solution. Okay, so enabling numlock by default upon startup (which various components in Linux distributions so graciously turns off despite contrary BIOS settings) is bad for laptops and stuff, and adding auto-detection would be cumbersome, so why not make a relatively obvious option of letting the user specify this, preferably in the login settings screen? Having Linux Mint being the exception to this problem would be great. At the very least have a script that does the workaround for me.

Secondly, please do not follow GNOME's habit of obliterating perfectly good settings screens into a box of useless text. Mint has done pretty good so far on this.

The standard sounds setting screen badly needs a 'set default device option', preferably for both output and input devices. Only the rarest of operations should stay config file only to stay GUI user friendly.

About splash screens: for me it's more of a 'nice to have' thing. I only see it during boot and shutdown, times I don't stay in front of the monitor anyway.