For a beginner user which one is better: Mate or Cinnamon

[metude]

I know, probably a million time this topic discussed. (Maybe something changed in new Nadia, I'll re-ask this)

I want to switch to Linux from Windows. I have limited experience on Linux. So which one is better for me, Cinnamon or Mate?

I have one more question about installation. Previous version of Mint was having trouble about my partitons. I have three partition. One of them has 100gb space and haven't been allocated. But mint saw my disk as "1TB unallocated partition". I haven't tried it with Nadia, now downlading Nadia. Any idea why it happened?

[nomko]

So which one is better for me, Cinnamon or Mate?

Depents totally on your own decision! What you can do is try both desktop environments by using a live-cd. MATE is rather easy to use and easy to configure while Cinnamon is also easy to use, but you can install extra applets, extensions and themes from the Cinnamon website. MATE migth look a bit outdated while Cinnamon looks much newer but that is just appereances. I like both for the fact that they provide me a classical menu.

But which one suits your needs/wishes the best? That's up to you!

I have one more question about installation. Previous version of Mint was having trouble about my partitons. I have three partition. One of them has 100gb space and haven't been allocated. But mint saw my disk as "1TB unallocated partition". I haven't tried it with Nadia, now downlading Nadia. Any idea why it happened?

My best guess is that Mint 14 doesn't recognize your NTFS partition. But as i can see you have 4 partitions:
1x 100MB
1x 342GB
1x 488GB
1x 101GB

What is that first partition with the size of 100MB?

[metude]

What is that first partition with the size of 100MB?

Firts one (100Mb) created by Windows. AFAIK something like swap area on Linux.

[nomko]

Firts one (100Mb) created by Windows. AFAIK something like swap area on Linux.

It's not only the first partition which is formatted in a Windows format:

1x 100MB => NTFS
1x 342GB => NTFS
1x 488GB => NTFS
1x 101GB => unallocated

[metude]

1x 101GB => unallocated

Then how can I install mint to here.

[nomko]

1x 101GB => unallocated

Then how can I install mint to here.

You have to select that partition during the installation when you have to select how Mint should partition your drive.

[741cc]

1x 101GB => unallocated

Then how can I install mint to here.

First of all, you do have all of your personal files backed up, don't you? Newbies playing with partitions can often end in tears.
Try the user guides here:-
http://www.linuxmint.com/documentation.php
Hopefully you'll find one in your native language. The specific information you're looking for is on page 14 of the English version.
Good Luck.

[Lantesh]

During installation you have to choose the third option when asked where you want to do the install. I believe the option is "something else". This will allow you to manually choose the partition.

As for Cinnamon vs. MATE, I switched to Cinnamon when it first came out. It was very hard for me to let go of the old Gnome 2 environment, and at first I had planned to use MATE. After pondering it for awhile though it seemed to make more sense to use Cinnamon since it runs on Gnome 3, and uses GTK3. MATE is a great desktop, but the core of it is last generation code. At some point we all have to move forward. What would be really cool is if the MATE team could build it's desktop on top of Gnome 3, but I don't see that happening. I also did grow to love Cinnamon, so at this point I'd never go back.

[metude]

Thanks @Lantesh I'll prefer Cinnamon.

@741cc, thanks for remind, I backed up.
---
@nomko

Here's a ss from my installation.


As I said previous posts I have Win7 and four partiton. But Mint saws my disk as a one free partition. So If I add new partition possibly it'll delete everything, right? (I choose "something else" as installation type.)

[741cc]

Boot from your live media and find gparted in the menu. Run it and see if it shows a layout similar to your first ss. If it does, re-format the fourth partition (sda4 if you only have 1 hd) to ext4 and re-run the installer and install Mint there. This will likely throw up some error messages regarding swap space. Ignore these if you have several Gb's of ram and do not use suspend/hibernate very much.

Keep us informed, there are other options.

Edit - your second ss shows the live media has recognised your partitions as they are shown on the desktop. This must be an installer bug, maybe NTFS not recognised?

[metude]

Edit - your second ss shows the live media has recognised your partitions as they are shown on the desktop. This must be an installer bug, maybe NTFS not recognised?

Yep, I can access my 2 ntfs partition from linux but mint sees my disk one empty partition during installation.

[741cc]

When you say that you can access the two NTFS partitions from linux, do you mean from the live medium that you are attempting to install mint from?
Did you run gparted and format the 100 GB unallocated space to ext4 and try a re-install?

[bwat47]

During installation you have to choose the third option when asked where you want to do the install. I believe the option is "something else". This will allow you to manually choose the partition.

As for Cinnamon vs. MATE, I switched to Cinnamon when it first came out. It was very hard for me to let go of the old Gnome 2 environment, and at first I had planned to use MATE. After pondering it for awhile though it seemed to make more sense to use Cinnamon since it runs on Gnome 3, and uses GTK3. MATE is a great desktop, but the core of it is last generation code. At some point we all have to move forward. What would be really cool is if the MATE team could build it's desktop on top of Gnome 3, but I don't see that happening. I also did grow to love Cinnamon, so at this point I'd never go back.

I also prefer cinnamon for its more modern underpinnings (and the fact that its based on gnome-shell/mutter and has well integrated compositing, so I don't have to deal with compiz). MATE is a good desktop too, but I too don't like its implementation. I think it was kind of silly for MATE to fork gnome 2, instead of forking gnome-fallback (I've heard MATE does plan to go gtk3 eventually, but why do it this way? The gnome panel and gnome apps were *already* ported to gtk3... Yes gnome fallback needs improvement, but in the long run it would have been easier for them to fork gnome-fallback and improve that, rather than forking gnome 2 and then porting it to gtk3 some day :/) Anyway enough ranting from me

[741cc]

I also prefer cinnamon for its more modern underpinnings (and the fact that its based on gnome-shell/mutter and has well integrated compositing, so I don't have to deal with compiz). MATE is a good desktop too, but I too don't like its implementation. I think it was kind of silly for MATE to fork gnome 2, instead of forking gnome-fallback (I've heard MATE does plan to go gtk3 eventually, but why do it this way? The gnome panel and gnome apps were *already* ported to gtk3... Yes gnome fallback needs improvement, but in the long run it would have been easier for them to fork gnome-fallback and improve that, rather than forking gnome 2 and then porting it to gtk3 some day :/) Anyway enough ranting from me

You'll be needing SolusOS 2 then. I think thats the direction they're heading. Stable one comes out when the next Debian stable release (7) comes out.

[bimsebasse]

Yep - I think SolusOS did this the right way: take the Gnome 3 fallback session, polish and expand it to accomplish something on level with Gnome 2. A year has gone and MATE still strikes me as fundamentally a bad decision, however much temporary comfort it gives to Gnome 2 diehards.

[bwat47]

I also prefer cinnamon for its more modern underpinnings (and the fact that its based on gnome-shell/mutter and has well integrated compositing, so I don't have to deal with compiz). MATE is a good desktop too, but I too don't like its implementation. I think it was kind of silly for MATE to fork gnome 2, instead of forking gnome-fallback (I've heard MATE does plan to go gtk3 eventually, but why do it this way? The gnome panel and gnome apps were *already* ported to gtk3... Yes gnome fallback needs improvement, but in the long run it would have been easier for them to fork gnome-fallback and improve that, rather than forking gnome 2 and then porting it to gtk3 some day :/) Anyway enough ranting from me

You'll be needing SolusOS 2 then. I think thats the direction they're heading. Stable one comes out when the next Debian stable release (7) comes out.

Yeah I like their approach better than mate. However I think I'll always prefer cinnamon to any gnome-panel solution, since one of my favorite things about cinnamon is that it is based on gnome-shell so it has well integrated and stable compositing (mutter) out of the box, and seems to be more extensible with easy to add applets/extensions. Its got all the benefits of gnome-shell while having a sane UI. Of course for people that either don't want compositing or want to use compiz then a gnome-panel solution is superior, there's definitely audiences for both approaches.

[metude]

When you say that you can access the two NTFS partitions from linux, do you mean from the live medium that you are attempting to install mint from?
Did you run gparted and format the 100 GB unallocated space to ext4 and try a re-install?

I mean I can see files in C and D from live linux.

I didn't run gparted, I'll try.

[AJ1000]

If you want an easy environment I recommend you try Zorin os 6 core, it is the free version, and works very well. You can always add the linux mint repositories later. Zorin uses gnome 3 but feels a lot like gnome 2.

I use linux mint mate on my PC, I prefer it to cinnamon, as it seems like the finished article.

[homerscousin]

No KDE talk huh? A lot of people think KDE is the most Windows like. More options, more customization, more stable than Cinnamon, Compiz like effects, uses no more memory than Cinnamon, may even use less because there are no memory leaks. What more could you want? I can do things in KDE that you can't in Cinnamon. Haven't tried Mate. It just sounded a little bland unless you also used Compiz. Don't rule out KDE until you give it a try.