Have to say, Cinnamon 1.6 is awesome

[Condorman]

I took the gamble earlier this week and enabled the Romeo repo to sample the new Cinnamon release. Wasn't sure what to expect - it's cutting edge stuff and this usually results in me repenting shortly after. But so far, what a great experience. The whole thing looks that bit better, with effects smoothed out and extra widgetmadoodles on the panel. And I love the new workspaces too. I think Cinnamon has the workspace thing cornered on Linux. No one else does it better. But the main thing that's really pleased me is the stability. I expected crashes and bangs and wallops, and lots of upset as I reluctantly reinstall my old clone image. But no, it's been absolutely fine. Nothing major to report, other than figuring out my way around the new aspects, such as Nemo etc.

So yup, very impressed, and very much looking forward to Mint 14 and what may come next.

[k357k9]

Is it any faster/quicker?

[Condorman]

I'm definitely finding Nemo very much quicker. I swear it pops up before I even clicked it! But generally I'll say that I didn't find 1.4 especially slow, so it's about the same for me.

The upgrade process is in stark contrast to a very recent upgrade I did on my openSUSE install, from Gnome 3.4 to 3.6. It seemed to go well, I rebooted and everything was working, but then it seemed to slowly bug out over an hour or so, eventually rendering the desktop useless. I had to remove it eventually. So to find Cinnamon upgrading without any fuss was a real relief, and extremely impressive.

[k357k9]

I think I am going to play it real safe and wait for 1.6.1.

Were you running 12.2?

[Condorman]

I think I am going to play it real safe and wait for 1.6.1.

Were you running 12.2?

Yes, I'm using 1.6.1 on Mint 13. It's already available in Romeo.

I was indeed running Opensuse 12.2. It was really odd as it was fine for like an hour, then started to bug out. I couldn't power off the machine, it just hung there, but then when I tapped the power button on the machine it would then perform the shut down. I dunno if there was some kind of conflict with an extension, but I made sure I was running 3.6 extensions, and not anything older. Then it started telling me the sound system didn't exist. I went into sound settings and it was showing only dummy output, which was silent. This was all on an install that was running fine until I applied the updates. Meh, never mind.

[k357k9]

I just checked the cinnamon page. The update notice to 1.6.1 was there. Thanks. None of my linux news sites mentioned it.

Sometimes the work involved in fixing a problem is just not worth the time and effort.

[Condorman]

I just checked the cinnamon page. The update notice to 1.6.1 was there. Thanks. None of my linux news sites mentioned it.

Sometimes the work involved in fixing a problem is just not worth the time and effort.

No probs. Let us know what you think.

And your second paragraph - yes, that's exactly what I thought. I could either spend two days wrangling with the package manager undoing all the updates I'd added to Suse, or just stick with Mint and have some fun. In the end the decision was easy.

[InkKnife]

1.6.1 is working great for me but fair warning: Most of the themes I had installed do not work with 1.6.1. I lucked out n that my favorite theme, Baldr, works perfectly.
So a possible consequence of updating now is loosing your favorite theme(s).
Other than that, 1.6.1 is a delight. It seems smoother and smoother somehow. Very similar to the smooth feeling that OSX displays and contrasted with the typical hurky jerky Windows raggedness.
The new settings menu is a nice improvement and stability is much improved. With 1.4 I was seeing Cinnamon go down about every other day but after about week with 1.6.1 no crashes yet.
I am excited about how far Cinnamon has come in only around 6 months. An impressive effort and kudos to the team.
Can't wait to see what's next

[bimsebasse]

Hi InkKnife, you should probably update Baldr anyway. I'm guessing you have the one I made while Cinnamon was at 1.5 and it will lack a few 1.6 specific changes.

All-in-all the recent Cinnamon update takes a fair bit of work to do for theme makers but there already are a handful of 1.6 ready themes available.

[InkKnife]

Hi InkKnife, you should probably update Baldr anyway. I'm guessing you have the one I made while Cinnamon was at 1.5 and it will lack a few 1.6 specific changes.

All-in-all the recent Cinnamon update takes a fair bit of work to do for theme makers but there already are a handful of 1.6 ready themes available.

Thanks for the heads up. If you hadn't mentioned it I never would have suspected any problem or incompatibility because I saw how most of my other themes failed and it was very obvious, Baldr seems to work fine but I will update on your advice.
I also like to take this opportunity to thank you for making Baldr. I like light themes and Baldr is the best of several I tested. In particular I like the way you crafted the active effect in the window list and I think the shade of gray your choose is spot on. Easy legibility but easy on the eyes.
Good job! I really enjoy your efforts.

[Condorman]

Yes, first thing I did was update all my favourite themes and applets etc to version 1.6. All is working extremely well still. In fact, just last night I installed Mint 13 on a Dell Inspiron 1525 with only 1Gb RAM and a 1.86Ghz Processor and it has completely refreshed the machine. So, so thrilled with Mint and the new Cinnamon desktop.

[lunatico]

Happy to hear all the good comments on Cinnamon 1.6. I haven't stumbled upon any bad comments.
I use LM13 Cinnamon on my main computer for work so when it comes to upgrading stuff I'm hesitant, specially bleeding-edge stuff like this.
But I'm soooo tempted!

Quick question, do any of you know if there is an easy and safe way to undo the update?
As in, if I upgrade to 1.6 but something breaks, how easy is it to get it back to 1.4?

Thanks!

[bimsebasse]

There is handy GUI for managing repos here: http://www.webupd8.org/2012/10/y-ppa-ma ... h-new.html

What you want done is to activate the romeo repo (which points your system to the newer Cinnamon packages) and, if things go awry, use Y PPA Manager to "purge" the PPA. Removing/unchecking romeo won't remove installed packages, you need to purge it.

As one who has used the Nightly Build from day 1 (OK, maybe day 27 or something!) without running into serious issues, I'd advise you to just go for it. The latest Cinnamon is a big improvement over Cinnamon 1.4.

[lunatico]

I'd advise you to just go for it. The latest Cinnamon is a big improvement over Cinnamon 1.4.

Thanks very much for the tip. I have installed Y PPA, I'll play around with it and maybe I'll dare to do the upgrade. My main concern is that it could break some extra stuff I have like dropbox (I think I read somewhere it does not integrate with dropbox), a few applets and extensions, synaptic, virtualbox, and Cairo-Dock.

[lunatico]

Right. So I did the upgrade to Cinnamon 1.6 on a Netbook I have at home that I use mostly as a Jukebox. So far pretty impressed indeed with 1.6... feel snappier and robust.
Everything working fine so far except Dropbox. Well, Dropbox works, it's just that the Nautilus extension doesn't. Obviously, since main file browser now is Nemo. If I open Nautilus then Dropbox folder icons are there and work. This means that rabbitcvs will also stop working with Nemo.
Who should provide these extensions, cinnamon/nemo or dropbox/rabbitcvs?

Dropbox and Rabbitcvs, two pretty basic tools for a developer. I hope cinnamon team comes up with something soon.

[lunatico]

Hi, me again.

So I used 1.6.1 for a while and then loaded 1.6.4 (also from romeo) and I've noticed a big memory leak. It starts at 80-100MB and grows, right now it's at 325MB for example, and have seen it close to 500MB.
Any one else seen this?

I've also noticed that the packages have been removed from romeo. http://packages.linuxmint.com/list.php?release=Maya#romeo Anyone knows why?

Is it possible (through a PPA or something) to load latest Cinnamon for LM 13?

Thanks!

[lunatico]

Ok, self-answer.

I noticed it's on the backports. http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2225

Do I or should I disable backports after updating?