MX 19 Repository: The Cinnamon Desktop Thread

[Stevo]

We are glad to announce we now have the 4.2.4 version of the Cinnamon Desktop Environment in our test repo, backported from upstream Debian.

Please let us know how it install and performs if you give it a try. You can install cinnamon-core for the basic desktop, or cinnamon-desktop-environment for a full-blown system, though most of its dependencies are already in MX.

It works fine in my testing for a brand-new user I created, but there's something that broke the desktop in my own home folder--I can't add any desktop widgets or get any menu to come up when I right-click it. I've tried to reset it by deleting ~/.cinnamon, ~/.local/share/cinnamon, ~/.config/cinnamon-session, and ~/.config/menus/cinnamon-applications-merged, then running

Code: Select all

dconf reset -f /org/cinnamon/

but it remains broken.

[Jerry3904]

Nice! Going to tweet that?

[Stevo]

I will after I get the MX 17 packages built and into the test repo--I got diverted by the problems with the last Waterfox build, but I think today's source updates have fixed those issues.

The Cinnamon desktop has some really nice features, including window elements that increase in size along the fonts as you scale those up, but fonts in Qt apps don't seem to scale up. Probably there's some Qt setting that can solve that--maybe in qt5ct. It also has a built-in mouse cursor finder in the Accessiblity settings; something I think XFCE should copy.

[dreamer]

The Cinnamon desktop has some really nice features, including window elements that increase in size along the fonts as you scale those up, but fonts in Qt apps don't seem to scale up. Probably there's some Qt setting that can solve that--maybe in qt5ct.

Isn't what you describe normal GTK and Metacity behavior? Buttons are defined by font size plus padding. If font size increases so will button size. You can scale font DPI pretty high (let's say 160 DPI or 167 %) and it will be usable. Screenshot is 160 DPI MATE GTK2 desktop. The "problem" is that icons become small. Some icon sizes can be adjusted in the theme and in the file manager (150 % folder icons in screenshot). However at 160 DPI some things will look "off", for example checkboxes and radiobuttons. A positive surprise was Marco/Metacity window borders that scaled without any manual intervention. Cinnamon also uses Metacity themes.

https://postimg.cc/XZ8B95fV

I think the best "scaling" would be a few custom themes with properly sized checkboxes, radiobuttons and progressbars. Maybe I'm missing something.

Anyway, thanks for packaging Cinnamon. It has panel window previews and a nice window overview that set it apart from many other desktops.

[Stevo]

I was just looking at the window decorations, so maybe I missed the theme elements.

I added an "expo" button on the taskbar, too, which will please those that like that Compiz feature. It does seem to use quite a bit more RAM than the GTK 3 XFCE 4.14, but I guess fancy features don't come free.

[finickyrelic]

Hi Stevo,

Any chance you might be able to upgrade the cinnamon-desktop-environment package in the MX Test Repo? Debing Testing is now up to 4.6.1.

Thanks!

[finickyrelic]

bump please

[KBD]

It should work on Buster. LMDE 4 uses Cinnamon 4.6.7.

[Stevo]

It should work on Buster. LMDE 4 uses Cinnamon 4.6.7.

I'll try to make some time to backport it. Do not attempt to add the Debian testing repository to MX and install it from there, since that will most likely break your system.

[wdscharff]

Once quickly installed on my craft installation, everything seems to work.

It has panel window previews and a nice window overview that set it apart from many other desktops.

But it is also a big resource hog, 900mb initial ram requirement for me.
My first desktop was at Linux Mint, but for me personally, back then (2014/15), too unstable, no day without freezing or other bugs and I ended up at opensuse and xfce.
Looks quite nice optically though!