Problem with Cinnamon themes settings window

[will_b]

Hi, let me start by saying Cinnamon is by far my favorite Linux desktop. That being said, I'm currently having some problems with the themes portion. I'm testing the new LTS release of Ubuntu trying to get it ready to install to all my computers. I'm using the minimal Ubuntu Trusty install ISO, then building up from there so I can configure different desktops easily using scripts (i.e. I have some slow machines that will get LXDE and some fast ones that will get Cinnamon and I'm debating about whether to leave some of my servers as command line only). I also don't want a lot of the packages that come standard in Mint or Ubuntu, and I'd rather not remove stuff. To me, it's easier to just build it up exactly the way I want. Since the stable Cinnamon apt repo for Ubuntu has been removed, I'm currently building the stable "tagged/released" Cinnamon modules myself, then creating a local apt repo and installing from there the normal way with apt-get install cinnamon. All goes well, the packages seem to be correct, Cinnamon installs and runs. However, the themes tab in the cinnamon settings doesn't work. It doesn't show any themes. When I click the tab "Get more online", then update it, it does its thing, and appears to load 276 different objects. None of them show up though in the window. It doesn't even show the currently installed and running theme. In my ~/.cinnamon/spices.cache/ directory I see 276 thumbnail .png files with the theme pics, and one .json file, so I do believe that Cinnamon does know about them. The exact same behavior happens for the "Desklets", "Extensions", and "Applets" settings.

So being unable to figure this out, I installed the full Ubuntu with the Unity desktop. I pointed apt to my local repo... EXACT same repo on my NFS file server... never recompiled, never touched the packages then did the exact same thing: apt-get install cinnamon. It installed, I rebooted, chose CInnamon then went to the themes tab. Now they all show up like I expect. That's very frustrating. Maybe apt isn't aware of a dependency for this and therefore never installs a needed package, but the normal full Ubuntu just happens to have that package installed so it works?

Does anybody know of any possible dependencies for the themes/applets/desklets/extensions that I can try installing? In the ~./cinnamon/cinnamon.spices/ directory I see .png and .json files... maybe it's a package relating to those? My feeling is that this problem is NOT with my building Cinnamon from source or my apt repo, it's with some sort of dependency.

[karlchen]

Hello, will_b.

I'm testing the new LTS release of Ubuntu

Great. The Ubuntu guys will be pleased to learn so. Yet, though Linux Mint 17 is based on Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 14.04 plus the Cinnamon desktop is not the same as the Linux mint main edition. Therefore, this thread will be moved to the subforum "Chat about Linux".

Cheers,
Karl

[karlchen]

Hello, will_b.

Would it not be easier adding the genuine Linux Mint repository to you Ubuntu and try to get the mint-meta-cinnamon including everything which it needs from the genuine Mint repository?

Code: Select all

deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ qiana main upstream import

After all this is where Linux Mint 17, based on Ubuntu 14.04, will get its Cinnamon from, too.

Kind regards,
Karl

[will_b]

Hello, will_b.

Would it not be easier adding the genuine Linux Mint repository to you Ubuntu and try to get the mint-meta-cinnamon including everything which it needs from the genuine Mint repository?

Code: Select all

deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ qiana main upstream import

After all this is where Linux Mint 17, based on Ubuntu 14.04, will get its Cinnamon from, too.

Kind regards,
Karl

Thanks, I'm actually going to try that next this evening when I get back to the computer. I'm going to clean install ubuntu 14.04 minimal, then install cinnamon direct from the mint repo and see what happens. I'm hesitant about adding Mint repos to an Ubuntu install permanently for fear that the Mint repo might update a package in Ubuntu with a Mint specific version that may not work quite right on Ubuntu.

[will_b]

So I just tried installing Cinnamon from the Qiana repo with the exact same results as my source built Cinnamon -- no themes/applets/desklets/extensions.

Here is what I did.

I installed Ubuntu 14.04 minimal with 'vim-gtk', 'nfs-common', and 'firefox'
Installed all the X server stuff
xauth
xorg
xserver-xorg
xserver-xorg-core
xfonts-base
xinit
x11-xserver-utils

Then I added 'deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ qiana main upstream import' to my sources.list file
Then I installed the GPG key so apt-get would install packages from there
Installed 'mdm' login manager
Installed cinnamon
Still no themes visible.

Here is what 'apt-cache policy cinnamon' prints, so it's definitely coming from the Mint repo.
cinnamon:
Installed: 2.2.10+qiana
Candidate: 2.2.10+qiana
Version table:
*** 2.2.10+qiana 0
500 http://packages.linuxmint.com/ qiana/main amd64 Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[dtruesdale]

sudo apt-get install eog

The settings manager has a hidden dependency to display the preview images of the themes and applets. The Eye of Gnome will satisfy them.

[will_b]

sudo apt-get install eog

The settings manager has a hidden dependency to display the preview images of the themes and applets. The Eye of Gnome will satisfy them.

I tried that and I thought of that on my own, but that wasn't the problem. The eog package will be part of what I install, though. It's a nice simple image viewer.

However, through painstaking analysis (I'll spare you the gory details of how I looked through source code, dissected working vs. non-working systems, etc.) I found the problem. Long story short, a lot of Cinnamon settings are manipulated through Python scripts. It uses a Python cairo binding to do this which is not listed as a dependency for any of the cinnamon modules. The package that provides this Python binding is NOT part of a minimal Ubuntu install, however it does appear in full Ubuntu and Mint installs. The package is 'python-gi-cairo'. So, simply running:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install python-gi-cairo

fixed the problem immediately for themes, desklets, applets and extensions. They work perfectly after that package is installed. As far as I can tell, now everything works as it should. Perhaps this should be submitted as a Cinnamon bug? Hopefully this post may help someone else out there who likes Cinnamon but wants to build up their system from scratch.