Thanks, Cinnamon!

Posted Jun 15, 2015 23:42 UTC (Mon) by dashesy (guest, #74652)
In reply to: Thanks, MATE! by ncm
Parent article: MATE 1.10 released

I am running Cinnamon now for 2 years, the latest versions seem to be pretty stable, in fact it is so fine I wonder why anyone uses anything else :)

Thanks, Cinnamon!

Posted Jun 16, 2015 15:10 UTC (Tue) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link] (2 responses)

Well, I ran Linux Mint Cinnamon for over a year (until I loaded Ubuntu GNOME 15.04 in April) and I didn't have such a rosy experience. As a design it was fine, but it was not stable for me. For example, changing the volume slider would cause the entire desktop to crash fairly regularly. I filed a bug and got zero response, for months: https://bugs.launchpad.net/linuxmint/+bug/1274802 even though a number of other people reported the same issue.

I find the GNOME 3 desktop, with the addition of the "System monitor" and "Frippery panel favorites" add-on extensions and a few settings using Tweak Tool (focus follows mouse, convert CapsLock to CTRL) to be very satisfactory... and stable.

YMMV, of course, but that was mine.

Thanks, Cinnamon!

Posted Jun 16, 2015 15:27 UTC (Tue) by dashesy (guest, #74652) [Link] (1 responses)

Yes that looks embarrassing! I use Cinnamon in Fedora, I guess maybe that has something to do with it.

Thanks, Cinnamon!

Posted Jun 17, 2015 10:17 UTC (Wed) by marcel.oliver (subscriber, #5441) [Link]

I am also using Cinnamon on Fedora. Right now, it's in pretty good shape, but its history of distro-integration is not that great. In particular, its history of bugs does not make it a straightforward recommendation for users not able to deal with problems. For about a hear up until fairly recently, bluetooth integration was borked (in fact, I could only use it via the KDE Control Center) and only started working again with the upgrade to version 2.6. Earlier, there were problems with the network configuration (VPN setup, PEAP/MSCHSAP authentication) and probably a bunch of other things that I don't recall. Updates get pushed at random times, which is good when they fix something, but all of the above problems also appeared at random times via regular updates.

I am still very grateful that Cinnamon exists because it is better than Gnome classic in many little details that matter for daily work; unfortunately, Gnome classic is treated like the bastard child of Gnome and it does not give the impression that a lot of thought goes into what it should provide and how it should evolve.

I noticed that a Fedora Cinnomon Spin is under development and may provide some stability guarantees to Cinnamon on Fedora.

Mate is great on old hardware and fills an important niche. Generally, however, I am concerned about the breaking up of the entire linux desktop into a large number of niche developments with none of them sufficiently strong and well-managed to provide the relative stability and quality of the Linux desktop of 5-7 years ago.

Thanks, Cinnamon!

Posted Jun 17, 2015 14:27 UTC (Wed) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link]

I use it too (for a couple of years now), but not because I like it all that much -- I just happen to like it better than the current alternatives. It's been very stable for me, but I'm running it on the distro on which it was developed, so that's not unexpected.

I have a couple minor complaints -- it's a bit heavy for one -- but overall its pretty good. I should try MATE again, and Xfce 4.12. I'm looking forward to LXQt and Lumina. Especially Lumina.