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Cinnamon 1.6 Brings New Features and Applets
An anonymous reader wrote in with news that the GNOME Shell fork, Cinnamon, released version 1.6 yesterday. The release features persistent (and nameable) workspaces, a window list applet, greatly improved notifications (they're collected in one place), improved task switchers and audio control, workspace flipping while dragging windows, and integration with their fork of Nautilus. See the release announcement for more and lots of screenshots (detailed source changelog). From the looks of it, this release is closer than ever to merging the modern Gtk3/GNOME stack with the missing functionality from previous windowing environments.
The Cinnamon developers are working hard to make a UI that is useful to the user, and that can be a part of either single task or multiple task workflow. The GNOME3 developers try to cram their views down the user's throat, and impede anyone with a multiple-task workflow. moreover, the GNOME3 devs attitude is, you want something different that used to be user-configurable before, get a developer! GNOME3 and its developers can now die, they serve no purpose and the useful work has been taken up by competent people.
The Cinnamon developers are working hard to make a UI that is useful to the user, and that can be a part of either single task or multiple task workflow. The GNOME3 developers try to cram their views down the user's throat, and impede anyone with a multiple-task workflow. moreover, the GNOME3 devs attitude is, you want something different that used to be user-configurable before, get a developer! GNOME3 and its developers can now die, they serve no purpose and the useful work has been taken up by competent people.
I've known clem since the early mint days. This guy gets it. If only we had more competent people like him on the WINE project, we might see linux actually overtake windows.
Here's a demo video that shows the new changes and features.
It looks to me like they have something pretty close to the ultimate version of the Windows 95-like UI. If this had been around with this amount of polish a year ago I probably would have switched to Mint. Now that I've gotten used to Unity I don't know if I'll switch. Great work anyway!
The Cinnamon developers are working hard to make a UI that is useful to the user, and that can be a part of either single task or multiple task workflow. The GNOME3 developers try to cram their views down the user's throat, and impede anyone with a multiple-task workflow. moreover, the GNOME3 devs attitude is, you want something different that used to be user-configurable before, get a developer! GNOME3 and its developers can now die, they serve no purpose and the useful work has been taken up by competent people.
Are you aware that Cinnamon is a fork of Gnome Shell, which in turn runs on top of GNOME3?
I'll be looking forward to the updates soon. I switched to Linux Mint once Cinnamon came out, it seemed less buggy than Mate while still giving me the use of Gnome utilities that I preferred over XFCE. Cinnamon was feature-limited at first, but Linux Mint + Cinnamon still had most of the Ubuntu goodness combined with a UI direction that made sense. Now that more features are getting added to Cinnamon with every new version, I'm glad I made the switch. My only real question is how to best move my Nautilus scripts over to Nemo.
Are you aware that Cinnamon is a fork of Gnome Shell, which in turn runs on top of GNOME3?
GNOME's main problems are twofold : putting fucking designers in developer's seats, and putting fucking designers in control of the development process. Designers should be treated like rabid dogs, taken out only when needed, then put them back in cage and throw away the key. Anything less and they'll bring havoc to your project.
His problem is the GNOME3 team's UI, which is GNOME Shell. GNOME3, aside from UI changes did improve things a lot, but a total divorce from GNOME2's UI is not easily forgivable. And the dependence of GNOME Shell on GDM doesn't improve matters.
There is also MATE which is a fork of GNOME2 that looks great.
LMDE is actually the first linux desktop that I've used for an extended period of time because I can stand it. (And it brought me over from OS X when I upgraded that laptop). I never liked how Ubuntu locked to releases and much preferred the Debian rolling release. I've run testing on my servers for years but there had never been a desktop that I really liked until MATE or Cinnamon came along.
My girlfriend is on Ubuntu because "I hate windows and I heard about Ubuntu" but is getting fed up with "New release. Guess what we MOVED EVERYTHING AGAIN!". I don't understand how people use Unity. I have 22 windows open right now all doing something and like switching between them without pretending I'm on a tablet.
Props to the Linux Mint guys. The ones that may actually push Linux onto the desktop.
but is getting fed up with "New release. Guess what we MOVED EVERYTHING AGAIN!".
Use a LTS and don't upgrade (only update). Or use a distribution that is focussed on stability.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
They do: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTE0Mzk
It's also not hard to do it yourself: http://linuxfordummies.org/installing-the-cinnamon-desktop-environment-in-fedora-16/
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
I'll probably get modded down for this, but here goes...
People are trying hard to hang on to their old Win95 style workflow. Nothing wrong with that; however, for me, the old workflow with the start button and horizontal panels at the top and bottom of the screen worked better on the older 4:3 monitors. With today's 16:9 flat-panel displays being ubiquitous, having panels taking up vertical real-estate doesn't seem like such a great idea.
I personally like the way Unity and Gnome-Shell are doing things. Since today's flat panels have more horizontal real-estate, I'd prefer a DE that makes better use of it. This is what the panel in Unity and Gnome-Shell do. They get rid of the old top/bottom horizontal panel, and replace it with a vertical panel on the left. Sure, it can mess up people's work-flow, especially if they are used to the top/bottom panels from Gnome2, as I was; however, after using Gnome-Shell for a few months, I've re-worked my workflow, and actually feel more comfortable with the additional screen real estate afforded by ditching the old panels. Sure there are still issues. But I think people should try it out for themselves before complaining. Of course, it would have been nice for Gnome-Shell to at least give the option to users of having the old panel, even though, I now would never use such an option.
Mmmmm....cinnamon applets.... ;o)
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
Cinnamon is written in C and Vala and according to ohloh.net, has about 200,000 lines of code.
Wine is written in C++, it has to be in C++ because that's what the Microsoft APIs are. C and Vala are not easy to use, but they're easier than C++. Wine is at 2.4 million lines of code, a nice round twelve times the size of Cinnamon.
And while the Mint team is doing awesome work, they're engineering improvements on something that's already free software. The Wine team is re-implementing APIs based upon public documentation but they don't have access to the original source code. The Wine team also has more ground to cover - Microsoft has a staggering number of APIs and special cases.
You're insulting the wine team needlessly, they're tackling a monumental task. If you think you can do better, go fork the project.
GNOME's main problems are twofold : putting fucking designers in developer's seats, and putting fucking designers in control of the development process.
No, it's worse than that. They're not even good designers (yes, there is such a thing). I'm not a graphic designer, but I've studied the principles, and have worked professionally with them building everything from stage sets to user interfaces. It's true that engineers can't be replaced by architects and equally that developers can't be replaced by designers. But if you think for a moment that this makes architects and designers anything less than essential right from the beginning, you've got another thing coming.
No, GNOME's biggest load of fail came when they began cherry-picking their input. According to the core devs, those who complained about the missing features and the arbitrary UX decisions were either wrong or missing the point. They tested for the things they wanted, and they got them. They went chasing after a mythical, idealised user of their own invention, and soon enough, those were the only users left.
To be fair, Canonical is embarked on the very same thing, and to a lesser degree, Microsoft is guilty of it with Windows 8[*].
It's a common enough sin: believing that you actually know your audience better than the audience knows itself. But the catch is that this is a key part of what makes good designers good. It was essential to Jobs' Reality Distortion Field, and it's what rightly made him famous.
A great designer, therefore, knows she knows the audience implicitly. A merely good designer, on the other hand, knows she doesn't know the audience implicitly and therefore scales back her ambition to what she does know.
A bad designer doesn't realise that he really doesn't know his audience. And works for GNOME.
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[*] In fairness to MS, they did a lot of things right, but as always, they allowed business logic (and I use that term loosely) to dictate a lot of the implementation decisions. So I suspect they got a bad design by not trusting the designers enough.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.