[PLUG] Cinnamon desktop?

[JP Vossen <jp@jpsdomain.org>]

Is anyone using the Cinnamon desktop in Mint or Ubuntu?  Thoughts?

While I like Unity on some form-factors (like the Mini9) and for some 
users (non-power), I'm not sure it's what I want on my personal 
large-screen workstation, or for the kid's laptop.  And with the 2013-04 
deadline getting closer, I need to finally finish upgrading from 10.04 
to 12.04 (I'm sticking with LTS).

For me, it seems like Unity really wants to run most things full-screen, 
and that's just too much and too ugly on a big screen.  I know you don't 
*have* to run full-screen, but...  I also really like the Gnome2 
interface, it just makes sense to me in  way that Windows (and KDE) 
never did.  XFCE and LXDE are nice too, but lubuntu-desktop is *very* 
Windows-like (good for switching Windows users though), and I'm just not 
thrilled with xubuntu-desktop.  (And annoying, Lubuntu 20.04 is *not* LTS.)


So, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATE_%28desktop_environment%29 is nice, 
but it's just Gnome2 forked with some minor changes, EXCEPT, no 
"Indicator Applet Session" in top right.  I could use that or--for 12.04 
LTS anyway--"Gnome Classic" (handy: 
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PreciseGnomeClassicTweaks)...  But...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnamon_%28user_interface%29 is *really* 
cool.  It's a Gnome3/shell fork that still looks a lot like Gnome2, but 
the menu is actually *much* nicer and cooler, and it combines the best 
of both worlds with menu discovery and typing speed.  I don't care that 
much about "pretty" or eyecandy, but that's all there if you want it.

The default Cinnamon has everything at the bottom (like 
Windows/Lubuntu), but you can easily change that in the Cinnamon control 
panel, and it's already 2-panel (Gnome2-like) by default in 
http://sourceforge.net/projects/cinnamon-remix/.

Another nice thing about MATE and Cinnamon is that they track indicator 
messages for you!  Why Unity doesn't do this is beyond me; if you miss 
it it's gone.  Forget about trying to read it, copy and paste from it, 
etc.  It's just there and gone.  MATE and Cinnamon let you get 'em back 
and read 'em.  Duh...

Linux Mint itself looks really nice, but--like Lubuntu--the default 
looks far too much like Windows for me.  That's easy enough to change, 
of course, and Mint is 95% Ubuntu anyway, but for now I think I'd rather 
run Ubuntu + Cinnamon.  For one thing, it's then really easy to just 
'aptitude install *-desktop' for something else.

Cinnamon on Ubuntu 12.04
    # 
http://www.linuxbsdos.com/2012/09/20/install-cinnamon-1-6-in-ubuntu-12-04-lts/
    * sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gwendal-lebihan-dev/cinnamon-stable
    * sudo aptitude update
    * apt-get install cinnamon

I know why they did it, but the window controls on the left still really 
bugs me.  Unity and Gnome Classic still do that, all the others have 
them on the right by default, but Cinnamon is cool because it's really 
easy to move them around (nice GUI conf, no gconf-editor).

I have a test laptop with a bunch of this stuff installed on Ubuntu 
12.04.  I'm not sure it's an entire hour, but I could bring that and 
demo this stuff at the next PLUG W/N meeting(s) if nothing better 
presents itself.

And by the way, how cool is this?  With a Mac or Windows, you are just 
stuck with whatever crap the vendor gives you.  (And I don't care what 
you Mac people say, I hate the Mac GUI.)  With Linux, and to be fair the 
BSDs and some other systems, you can find something that works well for 
you, and then change it as needed.  'aptitude update && aptitude 
full-upgrade', not having to worry about licenses, and above all, all 
this freedom of choice...  This is why I can't understand why anyone 
uses anything else.  (Yeah, yeah, games and Windows-only crap...  We're 
getting there... :)

Later,
JP
----------------------------|:::======|-------------------------------
JP Vossen, CISSP            |:::======|      http://bashcookbook.com/
My Account, My Opinions     |=========|      http://www.jpsdomain.org/
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