Introducing CinnaMX: An unofficial MX Linux community respin

[Joseph DeGarmo]

UPDATE: CinnaMX 21.1.4 released. See below for details.

Hello, guys. I'm a new member here. I have been using MX Linux off and on for the last two years and I think that this is a great distro. I've also been using other distros, including Linux Mint, Arch Linux, Garuda Linux, and a couple of Ubuntu flavors. Thanks for accepting me as a member.

I have been seeing the community release a few respins of MX Linux and I figured that I could create one of my own. This one is called CinnaMX, an MX respin featuring the Cinnamon desktop environment. This is a custom build of MX Linux 21.1 AHS XFCE with the Cinnamon desktop added. It features a customized desktop layout with a dock and utilizes the Mint themes and icons. The desktop background was created by myself using a non-licensed HiDPI image.

The Brave web browser has been added to this build and set as the default browser. Included in this build are many packages found in Linux Mint, including Warpinator, Hypnotix, Library (Thingy), and Web Apps. I do not claim any credit for the Linux Mint applications and themes because they were developed by Clement LeFebvre for use in other Linux distributions. Also included are the GNOME / Cinnamon versions of the standard packages, including the Nemo file manager, GEdit, GNOME Calculator, GNOME Calendar, Celluloid, Rhythmbox, GNOME Disks, Eye of GNOME image viewer, GNOME Screenshot, and the Tilix terminal, a terminal featured in Ubuntu Budgie. To prevent confusion between dual variants of many applications, most of the XFCE applications have been removed from the Cinnamon menu.

A few tweaks in this respin have been applied to polish up this distribution. Support for color emojis on the web has been installed. A configuration script has been added to prevent game control pads from controlling the mouse cursor. This is good news for users who want to run various games without the game controllers causing havoc caused by controlling desktop actions. Some of the MX tools, such as MX Menu Editor, have been omitted from the application menu because they are irrevelent to the Cinnamon desktop. The XFCE clipboard manager has been retained because it's the best clipboard application I could get to work on this project.

This project is a community respin which is not endorsed by MX Linux and therefore, the MX Linux development team will not provide support for it. It is in no way affiliated with Linux Mint. This respin is as is; use at your own risk. But feel free to report bugs and apply fixes to the build as you see fit. Please enjoy and provide feedback for this project.

CinnaMX developed by Joseph DeGarmo
Base distro provided by the MX Linux team
Linux Mint applications and themes distributed by Clement LeFebvre and the Linux Mint team
Cinnamon desktop environment developed by the Linux Mint team

CinnaMX 21.1.4 released. Changelog:

Added Qt5 Configuration Tool to force KDE and Qt applications, such as Palapeli, to use the GTK theme
Brave web browser now starts with an empty profile on the live session and a new installation
Restored the MX Date & Time entry in the Cinnamon menu and hidden the (Cinnamon) Date & Time due to Cinnamon's date & time settings not working

Known Issues:

Conky does not automatically turn on upon login. Click the Conky Toggle on the dock to enable it if you wish.

Preview image below:

CinnaMX 21.1.3 Screenshot.jpg

https://www.dropbox.com/s/36e9e9yjz9n8q ... t.png?dl=0

ISO download link below: (updated to CinnaMX 21.1.4)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wa9ollr47depj ... 4.iso?dl=0

Live session login info:

Username: demo
Password: demo

[Jerry3904]

Thanks for the careful wording of your post!

[deanr72]

Why not go with MX theming and apps?

[Jerry3904]

It's a personal respin, right?

[Joseph DeGarmo]

It's a personal respin, right?

Yes. I just wanted to share my work to the community and some people may even consider installing this to their hard drives.

[AVLinux]

Hi,

Very nice work and a good representation of things that are not defaults in MX. I can appreciate both the excellent freedom and encouragement we get to use the fabulous MX and antiX build tools here and also the huge amount of time that goes into the preparation, pre-configuration and problem solving to produce an ISO that deviates from the well-considered MX default standards so hats off to you for taking the initiative and hats off to the MX devs for providing the tools for us to do such things!

Wish you the best with your project and welcome to the Respins section!

[siamhie]

I'll throw it in a vm tonight and give it a spin. Excellent work @Joseph DeGarmo

[Joseph DeGarmo]

Why not go with MX theming and apps?

The MX themes are there, but I chose the Mint theming because it feels more natural to the Cinnamon desktop. I wanted to make it look different, but not try to make this into a respin of LMDE 5 Elsie. This respin brings the MX Linux core with the MX tools and some of the Linux Mint experience together into one package.

[richb]

@Joseph DeGarmo Thank you for your efforts. It is very nice to see the interest in MX motivate you to provide this respin. I am looking forward to downloading and trying it.

[Adrian]

Looks good. How are the MX tools theme behaving in Cinnamon? We tried to fix stuff for Plasma, added a bunch of launchers for the MX tools that make them preserve the environment needed to preserve the user theming. Hopefully that will help in Cinnamon too, and possibly other DEs but I haven't tested.