Splitting Cinnamon into multiple processes-new project?

[vidtek]

I have just seen this on the Distrowatch website:

"The Linux Mint team mentioned a number of exciting developments in their January newsletter. The distribution earned a record $22,803 from donations in December of 2018 and the team is planning a number of ambitious projects to improve the Cinnamon desktop experience.

One of these experimental projects separates Cinnamon components into separate processes, which could improve performance and make the desktop more secure. "Michael Webster is working on something really complicated, something we've talked about since the dawn of time: splitting Cinnamon into multiple processes. He's studying the possibility of having applets run in their own process and render objects remotely. This is very ambitious and pretty much R&D at this point. We're hoping he'll succeed with a prototype. Failing that there's also the idea of keeping the rendering of the applet content in Cinnamon itself and only delegating the processing (similar to dbus–menu), or to keep Cinnamon and applets together and split away the WM."

I don't know exactly what the Mint team are hoping to achieve, but it sounds suspiciously like a clone of the KDE desktop that they decided to drop last year. Why are they re-inventing the wheel? It doesn't make a lot of sense to put time and effort into something that worked well in Linux Mint last year and they have since abandoned.

[eddycanuck]

I have to agree. There seems a trivial fascination with "aesthetic" artistic improvements while other area's are stagnating.

1) After installing Mint v19.1 I was rather surprised to find that previous services like a ScreenSaver did not work.

2) Similarly I discovered that my CD/DVD burner was acting up under Brasero (although that might have been the case for 6mths or so upon reading this Forum) - so I had find a functional substitute in K3b (which I am now very happy with and will no longer use Brasero or Xfburn).

3) Finally in trying to discover how to back-up/recover TomBoy notes I discovered Gnotes - a maintained and better service IMHO.

All of this led me to roll-back to V19.0. But it also got me thinking WHY so many of this VERY old/forgotten and virtually un-maintained applications are still bundled. I mean as everything else moves forward they are orphans.

Why can there not be more attention to dropping old ineffective applications from the bundled package - and upgrading or introducing better serviced options?

Regards,
Ed

[smurphos]

This has nothing to do with aesthetic improvements, it's all about the under the hood mechanics, performance and stability of the Cinnamon desktop environment. I.e avoiding a badly coded applet crashing the whole desktop or slowing it down, that kind of thing.

[karlchen]

Questioning the decisions and plans of the Cinnamon developers is fine, only it does not qualify as a "Suggestion or New Idea". So posted in the wrong place. Thread will be moved to "Chat about Linux Mint".

it sounds suspiciously like a clone of the KDE desktop

Changing the internal working of Cinnamon does not turn it into a KDE clone. This is a clear misconception.

[AZgl1800]

it sounds suspiciously like a clone of the KDE desktop

Changing the internal working of Cinnamon does not turn it into a KDE clone. This is a clear misconception.

If Cinnamon were turned into a KDE clone as the poster suggested, I would be gone in a heartbeat.... I detest KDE.....

the whole reason for Cinnamon is to attract more users to Linux, those who are familiar with the schema of Microsoft Windows, and make it easy for those users to become Linux aficionados, as it has done for me...

it took Cinnamon to appear before I would even consider Linux, as the Vertical Learning Curve was just too steep for me to mess with it.

If the project to make Cinnamon more efficient succeeds, I will be very happy.
But, with a decent cpu speed of 1.8gHz and gobs of RAM, my laptop is any but slow.