Cinnamon to be default in Mint 13?

[realitykid]

@realitykid
MGSE won't be included in mint 13. Cinnamon is what MGSE led to, and that is how it is considered by the devs - pretty much all of the MGSE extensions were built into cinnamon.

I was just saying that if Cinnamon wasn't ready for Mint 13, MGSE would probably be reused.

[bimsebasse]

Definitely won't happen, development on MGSE stopped several months ago - it will be MATE or Cinnamon.

[esteban1uy]

What I would like to see is a way when you install Mint that you can pick the applications you want to use regardless of whether it is tied to KDE or Gnome or whatever. It could load the packages it needs for each DE. If I like Nautilus then I would get what libraries it needs. If I want Dolphin I would get what libraries it needs etc.
You could be presented a menu choice of categories like "File Managers", Browsers, Word Processors etc. Let say liked Calc from libra Office but wanted a different Word Processor I wouldn't have to have the entire Libra Office loaded.

That seems to be the worst possible scenario for a newcomer.
From my point of view, one of the beauties of Mint is its extremely careful selection of pre-installed software.

But let's say you want to do it your way. Being Mint based on Ubuntu or Debian, you can grab a netinstall.iso or a mini.iso, install the base system, change your sources.list to point to Mint's repos and from that point you will be able to install only those packages you really want. As an example, here you can see a couple of snapshots of a "mintified" Ubuntu Precise I made for myself just using a mini.iso and a list of packages (and I'm only 13 y/o): http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=88195&start=40#p553074

About the possibility to install certain software without having to install a complete meta-package (as in your example of libreoffice-calc from the LibreOffice Suite), that's really easy: learn how to use apt (try man apt-get, specially the --no-install-recommends option).

[Daniel4lm]

I think it is quite logical that LM12 originally come out with Cinnamon and DE Mate can be installed from the repositories anyway. A small correction in this topic: Cinnamon is not DE, by definition, it's a SHELL for GNOME 3 DE (like Gnome Shell).

[KBD47]

One of the things I like best about Mint is all the programs I don't have to install. Installing apps is the biggest part of installing an new OS for me. Gparted, Gdebi, Gimp, Banshee, LibreOffice, Synaptic Package Manager, codecs, etc. All those have to be installed on other operating systems but come out of the box with Mint. It saves lots of time and effort on a new install. I can imagine that for someone doing many new installs it would be a huge time saver.
KBD47

[cwwgateway]

It's interesting that this question still hasn't really been answered, but here are my updated thoughts. First, Cinnamon is leading in the poll that Clem opened. Second, in maya's package list, the mate package is mint-meta-mate, whereas there is both a mint-meta-cinnamon and a mint-meta-cinnamon-dvd, which could mean that cinnamon is default and they're doing both a dvd and a cd version of it, or it could just mean that not all of the packages have been uploaded yet. Third, Cinnamon will support both 2d and 3d graphics in Mint 13, which negates the argument that only people with 3d acceleration can use Cinnamon. Fourth, mdm is more gnome 2-ish (and therefore mate-ish), so, if it's used in the main edition, it would probably go better with MATE than with Cinnamon. Finally, there's a mint-artwork-cinnamon package, which could be interesting if it's a theme or something in it. Also, on a separate note, there's a mint-info-xfce package, which could elude to an ubuntu based xfce version (there wasn't a mint-info-xfce package for lisa or katya). There also isn't a mint-info-lxde package or a mint-info-fluxbox package, but my guess is that these packages haven't been uploaded yet (although there might not be a mint-info-fluxbox because there might not be a fluxbox edition).

[zerozero]

as always, interesting observations, cww

[cwwgateway]

as always, interesting observations, cww

Thanks .

[bimsebasse]

Good detective work! Though I am a bit worried that Cinnamon development has slowed a bit down (from frantic to normal), not much activity on Cinnamon's github page lately and I'm sort of imagining the devs preparing MATE for take off in Mint 13. Either way, paradoxically, the shell everyone was running away from, Unity, is probably the most stable and polished Gnome desktop at the moment (whether you're a fan of how it works and looks or not) and it would be a stretch to say that either MATE or Cinnamon are ready for the big time. Most likely Mint 13 will, like Mint 12, go down as a transition release marooned between Gnome 2 and its future fully matured replacement.

[KBD47]

Good detective work! Though I am a bit worried that Cinnamon development has slowed a bit down (from frantic to normal), not much activity on Cinnamon's github page lately and I'm sort of imagining the devs preparing MATE for take off in Mint 13. Either way, paradoxically, the shell everyone was running away from, Unity, is probably the most stable and polished Gnome desktop at the moment (whether you're a fan of how it works and looks or not) and it would be a stretch to say that either MATE or Cinnamon are ready for the big time. Most likely Mint 13 will, like Mint 12, go down as a transition release marooned between Gnome 2 and its future fully matured replacement.

I must admit that Unity does feel stable and mature at this point, and with Myunity, Unsettings, Ubuntu Tweak, and Gnome Tweak you actually can get some control over Unity and how it behaves. I think the biggest improvement is that you can make it quite small. Add in a few tweaks like getting rid of global menu and the overlay scrollbars and you can have a stable, usable desktop--and I never thought I'd ever say that about Unity

[bimsebasse]

Unity has the most man power and financial backing, so it would be embarrassing if it wasn't - but just imagine what Gnome Shell or Cinnamon could have been if Canonical hadn't wast... spent time on Unity but had gotten behind one of those instead.

[cwwgateway]

Good detective work! Though I am a bit worried that Cinnamon development has slowed a bit down (from frantic to normal), not much activity on Cinnamon's github page lately and I'm sort of imagining the devs preparing MATE for take off in Mint 13. Either way, paradoxically, the shell everyone was running away from, Unity, is probably the most stable and polished Gnome desktop at the moment (whether you're a fan of how it works and looks or not) and it would be a stretch to say that either MATE or Cinnamon are ready for the big time. Most likely Mint 13 will, like Mint 12, go down as a transition release marooned between Gnome 2 and its future fully matured replacement.

I think that the cinnamon/mint devs are working on porting it to clutter 1.9, llvmpipe, and Ubuntu 12.04. IIRC, some people said that, by the time Cinnamon, MATE, and (before Cinnamon) MGSE were developed enough, unity and gnome shell would already be good enough. While I still like Cinnamon (and to a much lesser degree MATE) over unity or gnome shell, Cinnamon and MATE are still working towards reaching the state that unity has already reached. In hindsight, Canonical was very smart to release unity in 11.04 despite the criticism so that it could get the development that it needed to be stable and pretty fast for 12.04.

[KBD47]

Unity has the most man power and financial backing, so it would be embarrassing if it wasn't - but just imagine what Gnome Shell or Cinnamon could have been if Canonical hadn't wast... spent time on Unity but had gotten behind one of those instead.

Yes, I would love to see that kind of resources poured into Cinnamon. My main concerns with Cinnamon right now are that it is too slow and heavy compared to similar desktops, and doesn't quite offer the configurability and options/features of other desktops. I think it has great promise, and I can see it getting there in a few years, but we are looking at an LTS release right now, and I think MATE is Much closer to 'being there' than Cinnamon. Likewise, I saw what Clem and his team did with the nighmare called Gnome Shell, I can only imagine what they could have done with Unity: Allow movement of the launcher, option of a traditional menu plugin, option to easily disable global menu. It is interesting to speculate. Also consider what Mint might have done to add polish to Xfce.
In the here and now I'd like to see a fully finished MATE in Mint 13. In a few years I love to see a fully mature Cinnamon in the next Mint LTS release.

[bimsebasse]

Good detective work! Though I am a bit worried that Cinnamon development has slowed a bit down (from frantic to normal), not much activity on Cinnamon's github page lately and I'm sort of imagining the devs preparing MATE for take off in Mint 13. Either way, paradoxically, the shell everyone was running away from, Unity, is probably the most stable and polished Gnome desktop at the moment (whether you're a fan of how it works and looks or not) and it would be a stretch to say that either MATE or Cinnamon are ready for the big time. Most likely Mint 13 will, like Mint 12, go down as a transition release marooned between Gnome 2 and its future fully matured replacement.

I think that the cinnamon/mint devs are working on porting it to clutter 1.9, llvmpipe, and Ubuntu 12.04.

No traces of such work on github. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places.

[zerozero]

dunno, bim, but this 1.4.0-maya has to be compatible with clutter 1.9 (and above) and precise (actually it is, i can tell you that), llmvpipe compatibility i have no idea

cinnamon-varias-versoes.png (13.47 KiB) Viewed 793 times

edit: we have here 3 completely different versions (none compatible with the other): one debian-based, one compatible with clutter 1.8.x and the last one compatible with clutter 1.9.x or higher.

[cwwgateway]

Random partially unrelated yet interesting note about Mint 13 - the default wallpaper is the same as 11/12 except instead of the release number (13), it has maya written in the circle. There is a different wallpaper with a thirteen in the circle, though.

[cwwgateway]

dunno, bim, but this 1.4.0-maya has to be compatible with clutter 1.9 (and above) and precise (actually it is, i can tell you that), llmvpipe compatibility i have no idea

cinnamon-varias-versoes.png

edit: we have here 3 completely different versions (none compatible with the other): one debian-based, one compatible with clutter 1.8.x and the last one compatible with clutter 1.9.x or higher.

I'm not sure, I haven't been able to get the Maya one to work (I think that it's still in the processes of being ported).

[esteban1uy]

A little experiment: install Ubuntu 12.04, then add Maya repo and install every Mint specific packages.
Cinnamon from Maya repo doesn't work but you can use this (fresher?) one: https://launchpad.net/~gwendal-lebihan-dev/+archive/cinnamon-nightly
And llvmpipe can be enabled using this: https://launchpad.net/~lucazade/+archive/testing (Ubuntu 12.04 includes llvmpipe ver. 3.0 but it was blacklisted, so you have to install a patched version of gnome-session for it to work)

Cinnamon from Lebihan's repo seems to work but its rendering via llvmpipe is glitchy as hell. The only way to make it a little more workable is disabling all window animations (by means of cinnamon-settings) but there are some other animations that cannot easily disabled (for example, the fading in and out of certain Cinnamon's components) and they look... horrible!

[zerozero]

ahh, now i get it
my setup is a little dirty (i installed glebihan's nightly cinnamon before adding maya's repo)
- now i uninstalled the nightly and installed maya's cinnamon but muffin related lib are from the ppa (was too much of a trouble to downgrade those)
- this way maya's cinnamon works;
- guess i have to start again to get a clean setup.

interesting findings about llvmpipe

[esteban1uy]

Well, Cinnamon + Fedora 17 + llvmpipe works like a charm. Not a single glitch even with window animations enabled:

So the key must reside in some specific patches they apply to mesa: http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/gitweb/?p=mesa.git;a=shortlog
If we could translate those patches to Ubuntu's mesa... Oh là là !