Cinnamon Gnome-Shell Fork Releases Version 1.2

New submitter Novin writes with exciting news from the Cinnamon project. Quoting the release announcements: "Cinnamon 1.2 is out! All APIs and the desktop itself are now fully stable! I hope you'll enjoy the many new features, the desktop effect, desktop layouts, the new configuration tool, the applets, changes, bug fixes, and improvements that went into this release. This is a huge step forward for Cinnamon." The release reintroduces desktop effects, fixes a slew of bugs, and introduces a new applet API (fixing a number of issues intrinsic to shell extensions).

Comments

great to see a UI centered on most user needs

[iggymanz]

Clem has a fantastic mindset compared to many UI developers today, he knows what most users want, he actually reads user forums and responds with attitude of user experience being important. He'll make GNOME3 a useful base desktop

Re:great to see a UI centered on most user needs

[EponymousCustard]

Agree, and he's done a great job with Cinnamon. I hope he doesn't suffer from burnout. Trying to do all that while doing the coding must be a lot of work!

Re:great to see a UI centered on most user needs

[LateArthurDent]

Clem has a fantastic mindset compared to many UI developers today, he knows what most users want, he actually reads user forums and responds with attitude of user experience being important. He'll make GNOME3 a useful base desktop

It still has this weird thing about UIs of late (not just in Linux, Windows is doing the same thing), where they fix the menu size regardless of how many entries you have, and then provide you with a scroll bar if you have entries over the menu size. I don't get it. Why is the menu going up to only 1/3 of my screen? If I have all that vertical screen space still available, USE IT.

Scrolling is a necessary evil. Whenever it can be avoided, it should be.

Re:great to see a UI centered on most user needs

[RDW]

I noticed the other day he's also now listed as a MATE developer. He must be doing more than just about anyone else to bring our 'sane interfaces back', one way or another. Cinnamon looks an awful lot like what Unity should have been, an alternative shell for Gnome 3 that doesn't alienate the established user base. Neither Canonical nor the core Gnome 3 team seem to have fully realised the enormous power of natural selection in the Linux 'ecosystem' (apologies for the appalling term). MS can get away wih imposing stuff like the infamous Ribbon because they have a largely captive audience. Linux users are quite happy to jump ship at short notice rather than switching to a new and (in many cases) unwanted 'desktop paradigm'. The operating system should adapt to the user, not the other way around. I suspect Mint has a bright future.

Re:2012 Year of the Linux UI?

[dyingtolive]

Hmm. Did you try using it in a coffee shop?

Map / categorization

[vlm]

Does anyone have a map/categorization type product of the seemingly uncountable UIs?

To the best of my limited knowledge theres a huge correlation in "the UI gets in your face" with CPU/memory/size requirements. There are very few (no?) UIs in the corners of "just gets out of your way but uses huge resources" and "kinda like a 3-d screensaver except its not a screensaver and it uses no resources".

"Usefulness" / "Productivity" seems to correlate with absolutely nothing at all on a global scale, although individuals scream for their own specific favorite.

The continuum of UIs, in order of light to heavy seems to be:

CLI dash and emergency recovery statically linked shells, etc
CLI screen and bash in virtual consoles
CLI emacs in virtual consoles
Ratpoison (I'm toying with RP, it is Very nice)
XFCE (my current desktop of choice)
(I think cinnamon goes in this spot, not entirely sure)
Gnome
KDE

99% of my work (no exaggeration) both at work and home currently is "something small and nearby" with XFCE running a tabbed console/terminal which is SSHed into "something really big and far away" in one virtual window/tab/whatever and another virt window/tab/whatever with firefox + a lot of FF addons/extensions, although I've used everything in the list above at some time in the past 18 or 19 years of linux. Yeah that emacs era was a little awkward...

Did I put cinnamon in the right spot in my little 1-d graph? I'm curious if its actually lighter than XFCE.

Just technical question

[Pecisk]

Disclaimer: yes, I'm using GNOME 3 with GNOME Shell as devs intended to and I have some ironic laughts about claims that "GS/Unity devs are screwballs and don't know nothing". However, everyone uses tools best for him, so...just use it, don't go around claiming that it's best desktop for now.

However, I have purerly technical question - why not improving GNOME 3 Panel? It's ported, code cleaned up, it's introspectable (you can write JS extentions like for GNOME Shell) and you can still keep all the goodies, including having compiz and friends.

Re:Just technical question

[Anonymous Coward]

Clem stated that they tried to talk to gnome devs, but seems they didn't care about integrate the needed modifications to allow a desktop like cinnamon offers, because it goes against their vision of the desktop they envision. Look in the cinnamon page, the response is given "January 23, 2012 at 11:27 pm"

Re:Just technical question

[Pecisk]

Well, no one forbids him to take GNOME Panel and support it. GNOME devs care about GNOME libs and GNOME Shell. But they don't deny anyone keeping legacy software alive if someone says and does so. Trust me, I know these guys.

"Cinnamon Gnome Shell Fork"

[sm284614]

This is one of those wonderful headline that will read as utterly bizzare nonsense to most of the world.

Re:Enjoy your....

[couchslug]

One advantage of Linux is you have full access to any turd you wish to polish, versus being stuck with someone else's fecal offerings!