Are Multiple Desktops Bad?

[Ow That Hurts]

Question 1) Is it bad to have more than one desktop installed in an LM20.3 installation?

I believe I read somewhere that it can cause problems that are particularly difficult to diagnose.

I installed the Cinnamon edition of LM 20.3, and then later used the terminal to install MATE.

Question 2) If I stick with Cinnamon (and remove MATE), is there a way to make Cinnamon less resource heavy? (The machines I installed it on are an i7-3700 and i7-4700 just using built-in graphics with about 8GB RAM each.)

Question 3) Is there a best way to remove MATE if it turns out I SHOULD remove it? And aside from themes / icons / desktop wallpaper, will there be anything "lost" by removing it?

Thanks in advance.

[Pjotr]

Yes, they're bad. Pollution of your system. I recommend to forget about it.

[Ow That Hurts]

Yes, they're bad. Pollution of your system. I recommend to forget about it.

Thanks for the reply.

I read through your tips for keeping linux mint healthy. It says to do a complete reinstall.

Is just uninstalling MATE not good enough?

Thanks again.

[Nikolai5]

Fresh installation is recommended with the desktop environment of choice being chosen. Linux Mint supports Cinnamon, MATE and XFCE. Unfortunately its not like the Debian installer which asks you what DE you want to use during installation.

I will say though, many people do it and encounter no issues whatsoever, its just that those that do have issues really struggle to resolve them, to the point where they have to reinstall.

So at the end of the day you could roll the dice and you may be fine to run whatever you want. I've heard of a number of people that use more than desktop environment. An old developer that used to work at canonical does so on Ubuntu without issue, running Gnome, KDE and Cinnamon.

I also personally know people that run KDE on Linux Mint which has to be installed after the fact as there's no installer that comes with KDE. They have had no issues.

It's a chance game, and it's up to you, we're just telling you that if you get stuck, it might be a pain.

[Cosmo.]

Do you encounter any problems out of the dual environments? If not you can leave them.

The question which puzzles me is, why you are interested or using 2 desktops? I find this very confusing. You wouldn't be happy, if your car has the switches and displays every day on another place, would you?

Q #2: No, Cinnamon is more resource hungry than Mate. If this is a concern for you use Mate. As you have actually both installed, which differences do you see?

[Ow That Hurts]

Do you encounter any problems out of the dual environments? If not you can leave them.

The question which puzzles me is, why you are interested or using 2 desktops? I find this very confusing. You wouldn't be happy, if your car has the switches and displays every day on another place, would you?

Q #2: No, Cinnamon is more resource hungry than Mate. If this is a concern for you use Mate. As you have actually both installed, which differences do you see?

Thanks for the reply. You asked some good questions.

I Installed MATE as a second desktop because it is more similar to Win 7, which is what my wife is familiar with. also, because I thought it would be much "faster" than Cinnamon on the i7-3700.

I haven't experienced any "problems" yet. I do notice that for a lot of the tutorials that show you how to use Linux mint, they are using the Cinnamon desktop. So if there is a tutorial that shows you "How to do XYZ in Linux Mint 20," they are most often demonstrating on Cinnamon. So if I am trying to follow along on MATE, sometimes I can't find the exact same settings.

[Ow That Hurts]

Fresh installation is recommended with the desktop environment of choice being chosen. Linux Mint supports Cinnamon, MATE and XFCE. Unfortunately its not like the Debian installer which asks you what DE you want to use during installation.

I will say though, many people do it and encounter no issues whatsoever, its just that those that do have issues really struggle to resolve them, to the point where they have to reinstall.

So at the end of the day you could roll the dice and you may be fine to run whatever you want. I've heard of a number of people that use more than desktop environment. An old developer that used to work at canonical does so on Ubuntu without issue, running Gnome, KDE and Cinnamon.

I also personally know people that run KDE on Linux Mint which has to be installed after the fact as there's no installer that comes with KDE. They have had no issues.

It's a chance game, and it's up to you, we're just telling you that if you get stuck, it might be a pain.

Thank you for the elaboration and the advice. I appreciate it.

[Cosmo.]

I haven't experienced any "problems" yet. I do notice that for a lot of the tutorials that show you how to use Linux mint, they are using the Cinnamon desktop. So if there is a tutorial that shows you "How to do XYZ in Linux Mint 20," they are most often demonstrating on Cinnamon. So if I am trying to follow along on MATE, sometimes I can't find the exact same settings.

In this case leave it as it is. I do not expect issues because of the double DE situation, if there had been none until now.

[Ow That Hurts]

I haven't experienced any "problems" yet. I do notice that for a lot of the tutorials that show you how to use Linux mint, they are using the Cinnamon desktop. So if there is a tutorial that shows you "How to do XYZ in Linux Mint 20," they are most often demonstrating on Cinnamon. So if I am trying to follow along on MATE, sometimes I can't find the exact same settings.

In this case leave it as it is. I do not expect issues because of the double DE situation, if there had been none until now.

Thank you!!!

[ThaCrip]

If I stick with Cinnamon (and remove MATE), is there a way to make Cinnamon less resource heavy? (The machines I installed it on are an i7-3700 and i7-4700 just using built-in graphics with about 8GB RAM each.)

Honestly, Cinnamon ain't that heavy on resources. I got a i5-3550, so similar to your CPU's, and I ran Cinnamon a while ago but ultimately switched to Xfce since it's it did not have the issues that Cinnamon did, mainly in regard to hardware accelerated video playback (like 720p/1080p x264) on Celluloid+MPV etc. like Cinnamon's video playback would get a bit jerky after running a while etc and I would have to restart Cinnamon (i.e. ALT+F2 then press 'r' on keyboard and press enter) for it to only temporarily fix it and then return the next day etc. but on Xfce it works like it should. I leave my primary PC on all of the time. but if you don't do this chances are Cinnamon is good enough and even if you do, it's possible you won't experience this issue given your using built-in graphics where as I am using NVIDIA 1050 Ti 4GB GPU.

but unless you have to reconfigure a lot of stuff I suggest wiping the drive and installing Cinnamon if you like that. if not, wipe drive and give Xfce a shot. Xfce is the lightest of the three DE's available for Mint.

p.s. 8GB of RAM is 'good enough' for most uses (I was using 8GB of RAM on my primary PC from May 2012 until sometime in 2020 when I upgraded to 16GB of RAM cheaply enough). from what I can tell Xfce seems a bit lighter than Cinnamon on RAM as you use your computer as the days pass with the browser running a while. but not a deal breaker either way. but if your trying to get maximum resources I would go with Xfce. besides... the general interface between Cinnamon/MATE/Xfce, while a bit different, is largely very similar with general usage.

[half-word]

I Installed MATE as a second desktop because it is more similar to Win 7, which is what my wife is familiar with.

Quite interesting; I usually install Cinnamon edition for Windows users as I feel its user experience is very similar to Windows desktop.

[Ow That Hurts]

I Installed MATE as a second desktop because it is more similar to Win 7, which is what my wife is familiar with.

Quite interesting; I usually install Cinnamon edition for Windows users as I feel its user experience is very similar to Windows desktop.

Well... I guess when I said that it was similar to Win 7, what I mean was that in MATE the Search Bar is at the BOTTOM of the menu similar to win 7 and win 10, while in Cinnamon the search bar is at the top of the menu.

Also, I heard that MATE is probably a LITTLE BIT more stable than Cinnamon. I know it in't a particularly big deal to restart a desktop but the machine is used by my wife and she is a bit technology-challenged.

[Pierre]

on most of my PCs . . I've got both the Mate & Cinnamon Desktop, installed.

then on the Mate Desktop, I've also got four of those "workspace" .. up . from the default of three.

[smurphos]

Well... I guess when I said that it was similar to Win 7, what I mean was that in MATE the Search Bar is at the BOTTOM of the menu similar to win 7 and win 10, while in Cinnamon the search bar is at the top of the menu.

That's easy enough to change to suit individual preferences in either of the desktop environments.

[Cosmo.]

Also, I heard that MATE is probably a LITTLE BIT more stable than Cinnamon.

There are rumors and there are facts. Fact is, that I cannot remember having to restart Cinnamon in years.

[Nikolai5]

Also, I heard that MATE is probably a LITTLE BIT more stable than Cinnamon.

There are rumors and there are facts. Fact is, that I cannot remember having to restart Cinnamon in years.

I've only ever had Cinnamon restart when I've updated an applet. I've never had the memory leak I've heard about, it's never hit the threshold to autorestart.

I even use a user-made applet that gives me a little graph showing CPU and memory usage that warns me "it may cause cinnamon to crash, if it does, try removing this", and it never has.

[Cosmo.]

... that warns me "it may cause cinnamon to crash, if it does, try removing this", and it never has.

I have 3 with warning. I guess that those warnings get automatically created on the basis of the code, not because of practical experience. I use one of those applets since 5 years, it has the warning since 5 years and it worked without any hiccup since 5 years. This says something about the applets and about Cinnamon.

[Ow That Hurts]

I understand that Cinnamon has been very stable for many / most users.

I am kind of walking a thin line with my wife when it comes to technology though...

Any time that anything doesn't work "as expected" she gets upset and says, "Why won't you buy me a Mac laptop?!?!?!"

She already spent way too much money on an iPhone, and I told her that if she had issues with it, she was on her own. I don't have time to figure out how an iPhone works.

Admittedly, the i7-3700 machine she is using is kind of homely looking. It's a small form factor and the CD player has been removed so there is a large hole in the front panel.

For all the great qualities that my wife has, technology is really not her friend. 98% of the time there are issues are because she has done something wrong. Like, forgot to turn the monitor power on, or hit the caps lock key, or got the optical sensor on the mouse so dirty that it isn't tracking movements.

Anyway, that is one of the reasons I put MATE on there. Might switch back to Cinnamon. We'll see.

[Ow That Hurts]

Also, one other side note.

My wife is from Thailand.

A lot of times when I am trying to give her instructions over the phone, and I am trying to tell her to open the menu, she has no idea what I am talking about.

Luckily for us, the Linux Mint Icon that is used for the menu in the panel looks very similar to the number 2 in Thai language script.

So I just tell her to click on the Number 2 and that's how she opens the menu.

[all41]

Also, I heard that MATE is probably a LITTLE BIT more stable than Cinnamon.

There are rumors and there are facts.

Where are those rumors?
I am normally using MATE--but Cinnamon is a snappy-fast modern desktop---hence it's popularity.