Linux Mint 13 RC Cinnamon: End of Desktop Customizations?

[Jags_FL]

Just tried out Linux Mint 13 RC Cinnamon (64bit) in a VM and the first thing I noticed that right-click on taskbar does nothing, so I can't do things like __move taskbar to the top, change it's width, remove default menu and add "Main Menu", etc__ which up untill Mint 11 I was taking it for granted. Now I know (and have installed already), I can do all of the things I mentioned in Mint 13 with Mate but if I understand correctly Mate is based on Gnome2 while Cinnamon is based on Gnome3.

So my question to the folks in the know __going forward, Gnome3 and onwards__ is this the end of the desktop(and may be other) customizations or am I missing something here? Many thanks.

[xenopeek]

Cool down, you just haven't looked in the right place Click the little ^ icon at the right of the panel. You can go to panel settings there to switch between top, bottom or both panels. You can add/remove applets. And you can enable edit mode to change the layout of the panel.

This was shared for Cinnamon 1.4's release: http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/?p=182

As a further tip, right-click the menu to edit it. And be sure to visit the Cinnamon Settings for all the other things you can already configure about your desktop.

[Jags_FL]

@ xenopeek Thanks a million for the reply.

Click the little ^ icon at the right of the panel.

Now i couldn't find that little icon anywhere on the desktop.

But I did find it via Menu > System Tools > Preferences > Cinnamon Settings > Panel > changed Desktop Layout to Panel at the Top + checked/selected Panel edit mode, and rebooted the PC (it said, if you change the layout you will need to restart Cinnamon).

No change at all, Panel was still at the bottom and couldn't edit it either. May be because its still in RC, its not working properly.

Thanks again.

[xenopeek]

Oops! That's GNOME Fallback, not Cinnamon. You need 3D acceleration to run Cinnamon (make sure you have the proper drivers and/or cards).

Yup. This is shown, even though you have selected to run Cinnamon, if the 3D acceleration isn't enabled on your graphics card driver. Please share your graphics card details by giving the output of the following command run on the terminal:

Code: Select all

inxi -SGxc 0

[Jags_FL]

Oops! That's GNOME Fallback, not Cinnamon. You need 3D acceleration to run Cinnamon (make sure you have the proper drivers and/or cards).

I'm running Mint 13 RC Cinnamon under VMware Workstation 8.0.2 and have installed VMware Tools. So far around 10+ times I have logged out of Gnome Fallback/Cinnamon > selected #2 entry, Cinnamon > clicked Change Session > but still its the same thing, and it doesn't gives me any error either... so how do I even know what it's running now... Any way to find from a terminal?

Just when I was about to hit the submit button I found this, How to run Linux Mint Debian Cinnamon in VirtualBox, shutdown the VM, enabled 3D acceleration and voila I have a Cinnamon running for the first time.

Taskbar is at the top, edit mode is enabled, and I see applets etc but still can't increase the width of the taskbar but that's something I'm not worried about too much. And yea, dragging icons like GIMP etc from Menu is tricky too

Thanks again.

[Jags_FL]

Here's the Cinnamon screenshot

I'm just curious, if you know and would like to elaborate, was the "right-click on taskbar / old taskbar behavior" a huge security risk or something or by doing that they(Gnome guys... i guess) removed a lot of old code etc? The reason I started using Linux, around 7 years or so ago(initially playing around & then started using daily), was the simplicity of Gnome.

Thanks again.

[xenopeek]

Not sure why you can't right-click on the panel itself (might be inherited from stock Gnome 3); you can right-click on the menu button to configure the menu, right-click on any item in the menu to add it to the desktop or to the panel, and right-click items on the panel. I think once you know, it is not that big an issue? You can right-click in Cinnamon on a lot more things than you can if using stock Gnome 3

[cwwgateway]

Here's the Cinnamon screenshot

I'm just curious, if you know and would like to elaborate, was the "right-click on taskbar / old taskbar behavior" a huge security risk or something or by doing that they(Gnome guys... i guess) removed a lot of old code etc? The reason I started using Linux, around 7 years or so ago(initially playing around & then started using daily), was the simplicity of Gnome.

Thanks again.

No, I think the Cinnamon devs don't feel that that convenience is a huge priority - they have a lot of big things they're working on like llvmpipe support (although my guess is this won't come till Mint 14) and patching memory leaks. The functionality is there (you can do most of the stuff you could with the old gnome panel), but it's just not as convenient to get to. I think the devs want everything to work at least fairly decently before they make everything work really well (not to say that right now nothing works really well).

[Jags_FL]

@ xenopeek & cwwgateway

Many thanks for explaining.

[cwwgateway]

No, I think the Cinnamon devs don't feel that that convenience is a huge priority - they have a lot of big things they're working on like llvmpipe support (although my guess is this won't come till Mint 14) and patching memory leaks. The functionality is there (you can do most of the stuff you could with the old gnome panel), but it's just not as convenient to get to. I think the devs want everything to work at least fairly decently before they make everything work really well (not to say that right now nothing works really well).

If convinience weren't a huge priority, they would have asked us to use the CLI... It's just that they have many major problems to handle that these minor things don't get enough attention. I'm also aware that some technical difficulties might arise but I haven't tried it so I'm not sure.

That's not what I meant. I meant having the convenience of being able to right click anywhere isn't as important as being able to run Cinnamon without it using GBs of RAM in a few hours. Major problems must have priority over minor ones. I agree that the minor ones are important, but they're, by definition, minor and therefore less important than the major ones.