Another DE option for Mint 12 - Cinnamon

[KBD47]

Thanks for your common sense Clem. After using Mint 12 awhile with MGSE I set my computers to Gnome Classic desktop, Why? Because MGSE was getting to be too much work. I'd tweak it, an update would remove my tweak. I had concerns that Gnome updates would break the extensions, and I also had concerns that Gnome 3 with all those extensions was becoming too heavy for my netbooks. So I think a desktop reboot before the next LTS Mint 13 is exactly what's called for. Thanks for continuing to make Mint better. BTW I think Mint Debian is pretty impressive.
KBD47

[iHateApple]

Wow, it's beautiful! I already like it so much more that both MATE and GNOME 3 with MSGE. Keep up the great work!

[Monsta]

I had concerns that Gnome updates would break the extensions, and I also had concerns that Gnome 3 with all those extensions was becoming too heavy for my netbooks.

Not to mention that there's no way to prevent extension conflicts, so carelessly installing too many of them might cause some trouble, like in this story: viewtopic.php?f=205&t=87940

[iHateApple]

Amazing work. It's nice to see everything coming together so well.

[KBD47]

I like it. Get me a weather applet and cpu temp monitor for my panel and I'm ready to go. Will no longer be using Gnome 3 Classic/Fallback mode on my computers when Cinnamon is finished.
Only one 'bug' I noticed, when I have a window open with a very dark background there is a shadow along my left panel, a bit of ghosting. For a moment I had a nightmare that Unity had invaded my desktop. It is a bar about 1" 1/2 wide that pops out when you scroll to the left side of the desktop. You can't see it on a light background, only on a very dark background.
Otherwise, we have a winner
KBD47

[Lomapur]

Too bad gnome-shell doesn't work on my geforce 4mx 440, dunno why.. Cinnamon looks amazing..

[Daniel4lm]

Too bad gnome-shell doesn't work on my geforce 4mx 440, dunno why.. Cinnamon looks amazing..

I think your graphic card does not have 3D acceleration(required by the Gnome Shell and Unity). These are legacy graphics cards, as well as the Geforce FX series, which also does not work in Gnome shell

[michael.conner]

Thank you, Clem! This is beautiful.

[Lithos]

I think your reasoning and approach clem makes a lot of sense. well done

[craig10x]

Yes...absolutely...i do get some occasional touchpad freezes in Mint 12 MGSE (mouse freezes...possibly extensions related?)...but otherwise it is really nice... but i am looking forward to cinnamon in Mint 13...from the looks of it and the concepts involved, it should be a real winner

[pluraldave]

What's the reasoning behind having the notifications in the top right? Would it not make more sense for them to be located with the system tray (wherever a user chooses to have it)?

[cwwgateway]

What's the reasoning behind having the notifications in the top right? Would it not make more sense for them to be located with the system tray (wherever a user chooses to have it)?

What notifications are you referring to? The only thing in the top right is the infinty symbol which brings up the activities overview.

[Jak696]

I read yesterday that Mint is forking Gnome Shell and the job I can see from images around the web is very good. We need an alternative to Unity and Shell and Mint is going on the right way.. good work!
It would be nice to take advantage of this new shell to modernize the general look. In particular I'm refering to the taskbar, that could be improved in various ways. Here are my suggestions:

-Give it a tridimensional look (playing with colours should be enough)
-Distinguish the systray from the rest of the taskbar
-Make optionally possible to see only the icon of running applications without the text

What do you think about improving the taskbar?

[pony-tail]

I am liking the look of Cinnamon !
Unfortunately I can not try it as Mint 12 will not run on my machine ( FGLRX issues ) .
I hope to try it as soon as AMD fixes their binary blobs . But until then I will watch and see how things progress .
Well done Clem !

[pluraldave]

What's the reasoning behind having the notifications in the top right? Would it not make more sense for them to be located with the system tray (wherever a user chooses to have it)?

What notifications are you referring to? The only thing in the top right is the infinty symbol which brings up the activities overview.

The infinity symbol is top left. Notifications are the message bubbles that pop up whenever the system wants to tell you something, you can see an example in the first image of the webupd8 post.

Also, now Mint is definitely sticking with a "traditional" desktop I'd like to recommend the (possible) inclusion of dockbarX in the panel. (Or a dockbarX-like applet as I think dockbarX might need Compiz rather than Mutter.)

[cwwgateway]

My bad. I am terrible with rights and lefts.

[Rehdon]

What's the reasoning behind having the notifications in the top right? Would it not make more sense for them to be located with the system tray (wherever a user chooses to have it)?

Agreed, if they appear in a desktop corner they make sense near the one hosting the system tray.

Rehdon

[clem]

Hi,

Just dropping by to answer these few questions:

- Will be possible to have more than one panel, like, one at the top and one at the bottom with different functions/launchers?
--> Yes, though it's a lot of work to get this done and it's not a priority. But yes, eventually.

- Movable panel elements, yes or no?
--> Same answer.

- Adding more launchers other than terminal and desktop
--> Yes, definitely. In Cinnamon 1.1.2 you can already add launchers using gsettings and custom launchers graphically (although that's quite ugly/broken at the moment). In future versions you'll be able to drop apps/icons onto it.

- Changing the menu icon
--> Yes, eventually.

- 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.
--> Not a priority, but why not.

- Some integrated mail client/trayicon
--> Yes, that's a neat idea. If we do that it's important we make it work with most popular mail clients though including webmails such as gmail. The main reason we removed the telepathy and evolution hooks from Gnome Shell was because they were closely tied to these applications.

Cinnamon 1.1.2 was released today, and brings huge improvements compared to 1.0.0 and 1.1.1.

[truexfan81]

Looks promising from what i'm reading, i just have one question: Will it work with nvidia features that gnome shell would not work with?

examples:
Seperate X-Screens
Xinerama

currently on mint9 i run seperate x screens with xinerama, lets me have the functionality of twinview, without the video tearing.

[carloss]

Suggestion: show the main menu by just hovering the mouse cursor over its icon (lower left corner of the screen), so that we wouldn't need to click on it. That would be an even faster and easier operation.