The ultimate dream Cinnamon roadmap for Linux Mint 17

[Brahim Salem]

I have a concept Cinnamon thatifimplemented wouldbe the perfect desktop ever made:

1- Nemo integrates Disks + Disk Usage analyzer + Sys. info:

To make things easier for users Nemo should integrate the following:

1- Disk Usage Analyzer
2- Gnome Disk Utility
3- System Info

So when we go to computer we get everything we want about the available disk spaces and partitions.The output should be something like this below:


[url=http://postimg.org/image/n3b2qm1dz/][img]http://s7.postimg.org/n3b2qm1dz/Nemo_disks.jpg[/img][/url]

and you can add "printers" and other devices if possible Take the best out everything


2-Nemo should support mp3 and audio files preview like on gnome 2

[url=http://postimg.org/image/mpbfxr6fh/][img]http://s14.postimg.org/mpbfxr6fh/Audio_Preview.jpg[/img][/url]

3- Nemo should support zoompreview so when we move the cursor over an image or file we get a preview with a zoomeffect.

4- Hot corner second desktop preview:

It like adding a preview of open desktops at the corners, so when we move the cursor to a corner we get a preview of other desktops like this:

[url=http://postimg.org/image/xdcpflivx/][img]http://s22.postimg.org/xdcpflivx/Capture_du_201gggg3_09_27_08_32_22.jpg[/img][/url]


5- 3D icons on panel and desktop:

[url=http://postimg.org/image/4e984fio5/][img]http://s10.postimg.org/4e984fio5/Capture_du_2013_09_07_16_34_27.jpg[/img][/url]

6- Icon animation:

Cinnamon panel should support animations so when we move the cursor over the launcher icons or launch them we get eyecandy visual feedback like we have on cairo dock. The desktop an nemo should support this two. Animations include fireworks? water ? snow, stars....

[url=http://postimg.org/image/brkrcg9f9/][img]http://s18.postimg.org/brkrcg9f9/Capture_du_ffffffffff3_09_27_08_32_22.jpg[/img][/url]

7- Cinnamon panel edit background option like on gnome 2

8- Cinnamon reset to defaults that removes broken packages and messedup system settings

9- Cinnamon window list should support window preview

10- More Cinnamon effects like desktop cube and transparent window

11- Chameleon theme that changes every few seconds like on Windows 8

12- Panel changes colour according to the applied desktop background

13- Cinnamon panel intellihide option: To allow more space for work when we launch an app.

14- Classic Mintmenu with more themes and styles: looks like someone has already started the project here [url]http://cinnamon-spices.linuxmint.com/applets/view/163[/url]

15- More hot corners + more hot corners options:

a- open app. preview with mouse scroll option [url=http://postimg.org/image/6thyb3vw3/][img]http://s29.postimg.org/6thyb3vw3/mint.jpg[/img][/url]

b- Hot corner Overview + hot corner Mintmenu [url=http://postimg.org/image/mdyit4ks3/][img]http://s29.postimg.org/mdyit4ks3/minthotcorner.jpg[/img][/url]

c- side corners [url=http://postimg.org/image/6xtgzf5k7/][img]http://s7.postimg.org/6xtgzf5k7/vvvvvhhhhhh.jpg[/img][/url]

16- Cinnamon must have a welcome screen like on Windows 7: Cinnamon takes long time to load after we log in and sometimes we start to worry. Adding a welcome screen that loads after MDM would be nice and assuring

[url=http://postimg.org/image/zdwy3pk4f/][img]http://s27.postimg.org/zdwy3pk4f/urfffl.jpg[/img][/url]

Implement this and see what happens to other OSes

[jintawk]

I would be really upset with changes like these - unnecessary effects & bloat are not what I want.

Customisation's like (most) of these are something you can achieve on your own with various tools.

Maybe you would prefer KDE desktop to Cinnamon? It's heavy and doesn't scrimp on features (like you describe), customization and eye-candy.

Seems like it would suite you more than Cinnamon.

[Dyfi]

It fills me with fear - as mentioned 3D is bloat and IMO unecessary for a productive desktop.

[MartyMint]

One day, when I retire, I'll consider switching to KDE...where I can spend my days making things go "bling-ding" and "whirrr-WA-ZOOOOM"...

...but until then, I'll stick to a "mature" desktop like MATE, because I have serious work to do.

[Brahim Salem]

I still can't understand all this negativity when it comes to change! Among a 12-point plan you made a fixation on 1 or 2 points that you hate and which we would be able to toggle on/ off Look at the bigger pictures guys some people love these features and they want them on their desktop and Linux has never afforded any complete desktop, an all-in-one desktop! Cinnamon is the best candidate to achieve that

[dogsolitude_uk]

It's not 'change' that's the issue Brahim, it's 'bloat'. The more eye-candy, 3D, effects, shiny stuff and glowy things that get added the more awkward an OS becomes to use. The more it gets in the way, when it's supposed to get out of the way.

A good desktop should be lightweight, and not use up more RAM or CPU than necessary. It certainly shouldn't be a place for flashy 3d effects: it's not a computer game.

If you want that kind of stuff, then you're quite at liberty to use the KDE4 desktop, which also ships with Mint. http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2422
It's blue I'm afraid rather than green.

It's funny, in this thread you want to turn Cinnamon into KDE with Compiz, in the last one about touch you wanted to turn it into Unity or Gnome 3. Why are you so obsessed with turning Cinnamon into an unusable hotchpotch of messed up functionality? It's weird. You also don't seem to get that MINT IS NOT CINNAMON. THEY ARE DIFFERENT DEVELOPER GROUPS, AND DIFFERENT PROJECTS. Mint is not Cinnamon. It is not MATE, or KDE either. What you're talking about is the desktop that sits on top of Mint.

The changes you propose are very superficial, and will once again involve tying up developer time, and also increase CPU/memory overhead. I'd rather have something that uses up less memory, boots quickly, doesn't crash and allows me to work efficiently. That's what Cinnamon currently does, and that's why I use Cinnamon, and not KDE4. KDE4 is lovely, but I prefer Cinnamon because I don't feel as if it's yelling at me trying to grab my attention all the time. It stays out of the way, and the only evidence of it being there is the taskbar at the bottom and the odd discreet alert from time to time. It's almost like you can forget it's there.

Gotta say though, it's great that you're coming up with these ideas and that, but I think you're directing them at the wrong desktop. That's probably why you're getting such a frosty reception here. This 'flashy' stuff is the kind of thing that KDE users like

I'd also recommend that you nip to your local library or surf the net a bit and research some stuff about usability and the software development process (including stuff like project management, development cycles, testing, usability etc.) so you can see just how much work and resources are required to implement changes to an operating system, and also try to understand concepts like 'use cases'.

While you're at it, as it's a subject you clearly feel passionately about, take some time to study User Experience (UXP) stuff as well, and really get into designing user interfaces. You'll learn a lot. When I was learning web development I swiftly learned that flashy stuff, animations and 3D effects would quickly annoy people and drive users away. You may get that 'Wow!' factor, but really how many people carry on using the Compiz cube or Wobbly Windows or Aero Peek after a couple of days?

The typical Cinnamon user isn't necessarily going to want 3D effects, touch screen capability etc., instead the're going to be more interested in simplicity and stability. It's why we use Cinnamon in the first place.

What you're suggesting is a bit like sticking garden gnomes and plastic flamingoes in a Zen garden I'm afraid...

[Brahim Salem]

I see your point dogsolitude_uk You are right about the effects and all but what about the other points like integrating disk usage analyzer with nemo and all

[samriggs]

I totally agree with dogsolitude_uk, when I was a flash developer years ago the biggest problem and complaint was all the bells and whistles and a lot of developers added so many it made it un-useable and ran their cpu to the point of catching on fire back then or just took forever to load.
Just because it can be done doesn't mean it's useful or good, the secret is to make it elegant, nice, good layout but the biggest thing is to make it user friendly and something that takes up as less resources as possible, I don't want my IDE or art programs etc to slow down just because my desktop has a toy effect to it or take longer to load because my cpu is being maxed out by all the effects flying around my desktop distracting me from my work.
Offices came up with grey cubical's for a reason, the only thing with color is what's in front of you, (your work), it helped folks focus more on what's important and got rid of distractions.
I have KDE (solydk) on my 32bit laptop which I use to play around on, with all the bells and whistles, but use Mint Cinnamon for my work because it doesn't slow me down or as dogsolitude_uk said, it gets out of my way so I can accomplish what I booted the computer up for.
Before any add on is added it should go through the process,
How important is it really?
Do people actually need it
Will it cause useless bloat
Will it slow down the system because of cpu usage to run it
Is it running in the background constantly and if so it better be useful and a must needed item or take it away
What is the purpose of the system your adding it to (to be flashy or useful and productive?)
Is it user friendly or will it just be more clutter to confuse folks with?
I also agree you should read up on User Experience (UXP) as dogsolitude_uk suggested, it might help you out a bit to understand why we say what we do.
In the flash days it got to a point of developers adding so much useless bloat and creating so many confusing interfaces for sites that they actually came out with books on it to try and teach developers how not to do this and how to make sites more user friendly and less cpu taxing.
The KISS method has always worked and will always work.
The stuff in KDE I would never want to see in Cinnamon, but it's fine for other uses for me as is, which is not productivity, although it can be used for that also, just to many buttons and distractions for me for a workstation.

[Brahim Salem]

I see your point Sam I'll grab a Mint KDE for a triple boot now

[InkKnife]

I like using Mint/Cinnamon because it is about refining and expanding a classic paradigm, not introducing lots of extraneous eye candy just for the sake of eye candy or chasing after what ever the chattering set considers the new hot thing. The same can be said for MATE and xfce.
If you want flashy and fad following go use Ubuntu or KDE.

[dee.]

I've been so hard on Brahim recently so I'll try to bring in some positive feedback this time, to concentrate on the parts of his/her suggestions that I think have merit.

1- Nemo integrates Disks + Disk Usage analyzer + Sys. info:

This is not a terrible idea as such. I personally like the idea of a "swiss army knife" file manager that lets you do many things in one window. Maybe it's not right for Nemo, but there's definitely room for a file manager multitool.

Integrating Disk usage analyzer and system info wouldn't be very hard I think, they could still be their own programs, there could just be links in Nemo to launch them from convenient places.

But I'd take this idea further: I'd like to see a file manager with integrated terminal and light text editor. The text editor could be integrated into the tabbing system, so that you can click on a text file, select "edit in Nemo (or whatever FM this is)" and a new tab opens, right among the file browser tabs, where there's a simple text editor, with which you can make that simple change in your document, without having to open nano, gedit, vi, emacs, geany, etc... for that simple change.

The terminal integration idea would work in a way where there's an optional text bar at the bottom of the file manager, and it's connected to a terminal that is always in the directory which you have open. You can type commands there, you can drag files on the text box and they appear as file names, and when you press enter the command would be executed in the directory that you have open.

I don't know about others, but I think these are the kind of things that would suit my workflow, personally. It's the kind of small things, that allow you to do small things quickly, that are very helpful sometimes.

Cinnamon panel should support animations so when we move the cursor over the launcher icons or launch them we get eyecandy visual feedback

It already does! You just have to code it in the theme css. Some themes already do have slight launcher icon animations, like they move up slightly when you hover on them...

7- Cinnamon panel edit background option like on gnome 2

I think this is a theming engine issue. Currently (IIRC) I think the background-image css property doesn't work on the panel, or at least it didn't last time I checked - they may have changed that by now. I agree that it'd be nice to be able to use background-image on the panel, as it'd open new possibilities for theme developers. (a theme with a wooden/marble panel? A futuristic metal pipe panel? things like that.)

9- Cinnamon window list should support window preview

There's already a panel applet that does this, you can replace your window list with it.

8- Cinnamon reset to defaults that removes broken packages and messedup system settings

Somewhat already implemented, as there is mintbackup, which lets you backup your package selection. Only problem is, it doesn't work on packages installed locally (Humble bundle games, self-compiled packages). However I think it'd be great to have a feature for easily backing up, making snapshots and restoring your entire root partition. In similar vein, I think a separate /home partition should be used in the installation by default.

[MartyMint]

I've been so hard on Brahim recently...

Brahim's intentions are good and he seems like a very...well...enthusiastic fellow, but he should understand that not everyone is interesting
in a spin of Linux Mint: SeizureBots Edition...

[RacerBG]

I will agree with point 1 about disk usage. This would be cool to know when you open your "Computer". In Windows this feature is handy indeed.

[samriggs]

Disk utility
Accessories> Disk Utility already has much of this.
I was thinking it was a good idea also for this one, but I used a conky script before that gave me all this and network, cpu usage etc.
What I thought would be nice to have would be to have the same thing or similar (with options as to what to add) in a desklet or applet instead.
Not sure if it's possible since it works through javascript though, I was going to check into seeing if it was possible when I found some extra time and try to make one myself, but it might be a nice side project for someone if there bored and have some time to make it, if it can be done that is.
I'm just not sure how much system info can be passed through javascript to make it happen or if it can be done through another language like python then somehow pass the params over, I know some params get passed over through mdm so it might be possible.

[Brahim Salem]

I can't see why most developers stand against new ideas on this forum when they're suggested by ordinary users but I can see that most of them clap and dance when they very ideas are implemented by the dev. team. Take the following suggestions for instances:

1- add format optin to nemo: I suggested that long time ago and they made fun of me back then. Clem has implemented this.

2- Splash screen: I made it long time ago and they made fun of me. Clem implemented it after i talked to him on the blog when Maya was first out


3-- Sound effects: Same thing and people thought that i'm a clown trying to make Mit a circus. Clem has imlemented this and they started loving it.

4- Netspeed for Mate: same story. Clem did the same


If you don't believe me to to the Mint community and post a suggestion and you'll get a minux 2 or three on the spot not matter what and you'll get long texts going into the technicalities of things and all



Explain

Acoording to Michel Foucault it al boils down to power relationships [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucauldian_discourse_analysis[/url]
TECHNOCRACY IS NOT DEMOCRACY

[url=http://postimage.org/][img]http://s16.postimg.org/phj2772ox/th_DANCE_417.gif[/img][/url]

[dogsolitude_uk]

I can't see why most developers stand against new ideas on this forum when they're suggested by ordinary users but I can see that most of them clap and dance when they very ideas are implemented by the dev. team. Take the following suggestions for instances:

1- add format optin to nemo: I suggested that long time ago and they made fun of me back then. Clem has implemented this.

2- Splash screen: I made it long time ago and they made fun of me. Clem implemented it after i talked to him on the blog when Maya was first out


3-- Sound effects: Same thing and people thought that i'm a clown trying to make Mit a circus. Clem has imlemented this and they started loving it.

4- Netspeed for Mate: same story. Clem did the same


If you don't believe me to to the Mint community and post a suggestion and you'll get a minux 2 or three on the spot not matter what and you'll get long texts going into the technicalities of things and all



Explain

Acoording to Michel Foucault it al boils down to power relationships [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucauldian_discourse_analysis[/url]
TECHNOCRACY IS NOT DEMOCRACY

[url=http://postimage.org/][img]http://s16.postimg.org/phj2772ox/th_DANCE_417.gif[/img][/url]

That's not true. There are a number of posts supporting your more constructive/useful suggestions here, such as implementing the disk usage into Nemo. Please stop being so melodramatic and playing the victim!

Firstly, those objecting to your suggestions are not necessarily those who 'dance when they very ideas are implemented by the dev. team'. Please post an example of someone who objected to one of your ideas on the community boards, and then went 'woohoo!' when it was implemented.

I think though, what's annoying me is that you don't actually show any indication of having read or understood anyone else's opinions. You either repeat your original statement, start complaining that everyone's a dinosaur (or some other taunt) or going on about how unfair it all is. This is not a particularly good way of pitching an idea to a community.

You have to be raedy to back up your ideas with solid, practical reasons why they're a good idea, and also properly address people's concerns and criticisms rather than just glossing over them. It's a bit like being a salesman!

If you had read everyone's posts here, and took the time to understand them, you'd also see that (a) I was trying to give you some constructive advice and explain my position as diplomatically as I could earlier and that (b) your comments about Nemo are being taken seriously.

Citing 'Foucouldian discourse analysis' and implicitly trying to blame everything on some perceived 'power game' is somewhat unfair I think.

[jintawk]

3-- Sound effects: Same thing and people thought that i'm a clown trying to make Mit a circus. Clem has imlemented this and they started loving it.

I hate the sound effects and immediately disabled them all

[Brahim Salem]

I was talking about you guys in specific but I was rather talking in general I have read and learnt a lot from your posts but you have to uderstand as well that Cinnamon is not made for developers only All this "bloat" that I'm suggesting is very useful for the silent majority who don't even have an account on this forum + this "bloat" can be an extension that can be installed/ uninstalled and enabled/disabled to fit everyone's needs and mood. When you speak about resource eating desktop you forgot that new computers have 8 GB of RAM and more and that you would come any close to use them all no matter what Our friend here has understood the trick he just went and disabled the sound effects; Me and my friends have enebled them all to get that " gingle bells" effect. We want to have a circus runnig on our screens and I guess we have every right to that


Jingle bells, jingle bells,
Jingle all the way.
Oh! what fun it is to have
Cinnamon with compiz effects.
Jingle bells, jingle bells,
Jingle all the way;
Oh! what fun it is to ignore
All the technical facts


In a day or two
Petra will be out
with jingle bells effects
'n all the things you hate
there's no need to fight
you need to cool down Mate
'cause the jingle bells my friend
will invade your Cinnamon and Mate


[url=http://postimage.org/][img]http://s16.postimg.org/phj2772ox/th_DANCE_417.gif[/img][/url][/quote]

[dogsolitude_uk]

I was talking about you guys in specific but I was rather talking in general I have read and learnt a lot from your posts but you have to uderstand as well that Cinnamon is not made for developers only All this "bloat" that I'm suggesting is very useful for the silent majority who don't even have an account on this forum + this "bloat" can be an extension that can be installed/ uninstalled and enabled/disabled to fit everyone's needs and mood. When you speak about resource eating desktop you forgot that new computers have 8 GB of RAM and more and that you would come any close to use them all no matter what Our friend here has understood the trick he just went and disabled the sound effects; Me and my friends have enebled them all to get that " gingle bells" effect. We want to have a circus runnig on our screens and I guess we have every right to that


Jingle bells, jingle bells,
Jingle all the way.
Oh! what fun it is to have
Cinnamon with compiz effects.
Jingle bells, jingle bells,
Jingle all the way;
Oh! what fun it is to ignore
All the technical facts


[url=http://postimage.org/][img]http://s16.postimg.org/phj2772ox/th_DANCE_417.gif[/img][/url]

[/quote]



OK, I'm not going to debate this with you any more. You seem either incapable or unwilling to discuss these things in an adult manner.

[Brahim Salem]

OK, I'm not going to debate this with you any more. You seem either incapable or unwilling to discuss these things in an adult manner.

cool down my friend I'mjust playing with you Being adult doesn't mean being melancholic There's a season for everything: a season for peace and another for war And by the way I apprecite your ideas and they are very practical indeed but if we keep Cinnamon the way it is then we'll end up with a dull desktop environment that's all i'm trying to say