What is Cinnamon exactly?

[Rua]

I'm asking this because I'm not sure what Cinnamon really is. Does Cinnamon replace GNOME Shell while leaving the rest of GNOME 3 as it is? Or is it a complete desktop environment like MATE intends to be, with its own suite of software? In other words, is it a fork of GNOME Shell or of all of GNOME 3?

[cwwgateway]

I'm asking this because I'm not sure what Cinnamon really is. Does Cinnamon replace GNOME Shell while leaving the rest of GNOME 3 as it is? Or is it a complete desktop environment like MATE intends to be, with its own suite of software? In other words, is it a fork of GNOME Shell or of all of GNOME 3?

Cinnamon is a fork of just the gnome shell part. It uses gnome 3 and also much of the codebase of gnome shell. However, it is very different visually.

[Aging Technogeek]

Put another way, Cinnamon is an attempt by Clement Lefebvre and a small dev team to build something using Gnome 3 technology that will feel and look like Gnome 2.32 for all of those Mint users who have already, or will in future, express a preference for "the way it has always been".

[wilms]

This seems like a pretty good thread to ask a basic question. I'm currently using Mint 10 with an updated kernel and the lastest firefox. I'm wondering what advantages gnome 3 might provide? It seems to use a little more power. I think the fan on my laptop is on more when running flash video with mint 12 although it's probably not much more.