first impressions of Cinnamon: Wow! [solved RAM issue]

[xfrank]

After years of using LM with Mate and Xfce, today finally I tried the Cinnamon version (LM 17.1) in a new laptop with core i5 (Thinkpad t440p). Just a word: Wow! So polished, beautiful. Now I understand why is the flag DE of LM and have so many users. Why I didn't tried it before? because I'm frugal and sober by nature, and so prefer the light DEs like Xfce and Mate. Normally, I tend to economize system resources for specific, more demanding tasks.
I can see that the developers have done a lot of effort to give to the customers a nice, polished DE. In some respects is similar to Unity (also very polished), but more "traditional" and, of course, more customizable.
Here is the point to compare Cinnamon to Mate or Xfce: has less customization options in some aspects, and more in others. For example, I cannot have transparent windows or window borders (which I use a lot in Xfce) and even the main desktop bar have not this option. Why?
Well, a mixed bag, but overall a great DE, superior to Mate and Xfce when running on robust hardware (take a lot of system resources).

[mrdachshund86]

Just a word: Wow! So polished, beautiful.

That pretty much sums up my first impressions of 17.1 Cinnamon. Before that, I has used Qiana with MATE, which was elegant in many ways too.

I can see that the developers have done a lot of effort to give to the customers a nice, polished DE.

What else can you expect from the same developers that created one of the nicest, most polished distros around?

For example, I cannot have transparent windows or window borders (which I use a lot in Xfce) and even the main desktop bar have not this option. Why?

Have patience! Cinnamon, at least compared to other DEs such as KDE, xfce, possibly MATE if you consider it to be an extension of GNOME 2, is just a baby. Transparency will come, don't worry.

What I really like about Cinnamon is its flexibility. Yes, it can be quite flashy, with all sorts of animations, sound effects, etc. If you don't like flashy, you can just turn all of that off and have a very no-nonsense DE.

Perhaps the best thing about Cinnamon is that it is about to get even better:

http://segfault.linuxmint.com/2015/06/cinnamon-2-6/

mrdachshund86

[Trollenator]

Great to hear a good review by somebody that seems to know his stuff xfrank.

I'm just playing around with it now as a total nOOb and liking it great so far.

Would have been right p-oed if that was a rant instead of a rave.

L8r

[xfrank]

I know Cinnamon is still young and will improve in the next years. For the moment, is very usable and pleasant.
Another bad thing I've found is memory consumption: in my laptop with core i5, 4MB ram and an Nvidia dedicated graphic card, at idle memory usage is around 500MB. With a Conky on the screen and Dropbox in the tray. I'm shocked! Is this normal?
Opening a couple of tabs of Firefox rises the memory usage up to 1.2GB!
As I told before, I'm a frugal guy, not accustomed to such a waste of resources. I know Cinnamon must use more RAM than Xfce, but not so much!
Moreover, the power consumption of Cinnamon in my Lap is around 14w!

[Pjotr]

@xfrank: have you tried turning off *all* visual effects in Cinnamon?

[mrdachshund86]

Another bad thing I've found is memory consumption: in my laptop with core i5, 4MB ram and an Nvidia dedicated graphic card, at idle memory usage is around 500MB. With a Conky on the screen and Dropbox in the tray. I'm shocked! Is this normal?

I'm afraid it is. Running just Firefox with two tabs and System Monitor, I'm using 1 GB of the 6 GB I have. For memory breakdown, the actual "cinnamon" process is using about 150 MB, with probably another 25MB of RAM used in other odd Cinnamon-related processes, and Firefox is using 350 MB. My other machine running LMDE MATE is using only about 500 MB idle, and MATE-related processes (caja, mate-screensaver, marco, etc) add up to about 75 MB. If you want something frugal, it might be better to stick with MATE or xfce.

mrdachshund86

[xfrank]

@Pjotr and mrdachshund86

1: turning off visual effect would defeat the purpose to have Cinnamon! Better Mate or Xfce then... I will keep all the visual effects on, I like them!

2: probably my memory consumption is not unusual at all. I've found a review that reports a 550mb usage (idle): http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/linu ... becca.html
That's pretty close to my idle consumption: 530mb. This is bad! I hope the developers will improve memory usage in the future.

[mrdachshund86]

This is bad! I hope the developers will improve memory usage in the future.

I wonder if some of the "heaviness" of Mint comes from upstream. If the Ubuntu layer is overly heavy, how much can the Mint devs do about it?

As far as memory usage goes, I think the lightest you can get with Linux Mint is LMDE 2 MATE. I think that the amount of memory usage considered to be "bad" is relative. I thought that 500 MB was excellent considering that Windows 7 usually sucked up about 1.5 GB. Windows eats up all the RAM, making the user live off the crumbs.

mrdachshund86

[exploder]

I have Mint 17.2 installed on 2 computers, one is a P4 system and the other has a low end AMD E1 processor @ 1.2 GHz. Even with these specs Cinnamon uses the same or less resources than Xfce. I would guess it is your graphics drivers causing the system to use more resources.

[RacerBG]

The last time when I tried Cinnamon on my hardware at all was with Linux Mint Petra. I believe Cinnamon back then was at version 2.0 and since then the developers put a lot of effort to minimize the memory usage. I was having around 230 MB RAM used at idle and I believe that the amount today at worst should be the same. However my hardware is older so maybe this is the reason why my memory usage is lower than yours.

[xfrank]

I guess the "culprit" is the hardware (with the Nvidia driver), not Cinnamon. The reviewer I linked (Dedoimedo) tested LM 17.1 Cinnamon in a laptop with i5 and Nvidia graphics, resulting in a 550mb consumption.
If is so, probably even installing LM 17.1 Xfce I would have an higher (than average) ram consumption.
But 500mb idle is not that bad, and with 4GB of RAM will not hurt my laptop performance. The bad side of this will be, of course, the battery life.
For information, this is my inxi output:

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xfrank # inxi -Fxz
System:    Host: xfrank-ThinkPad-T440p Kernel: 3.13.0-37-generic x86_64 (64 bit, gcc: 4.8.2) 
           Desktop: N/A Distro: Linux Mint 17.1 Rebecca
Machine:   System: LENOVO (portable) product: 20AWA1TULM version: ThinkPad T440p
           Mobo: LENOVO model: 20AWA1TULM version: SDK0E50515 STD Bios: LENOVO version: GLET77WW (2.31 ) date: 01/27/2015
CPU:       Dual core Intel Core i5-4300M CPU (-HT-MCP-) cache: 3072 KB flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx) bmips: 10376.8 
           Clock Speeds: 1: 800.00 MHz 2: 800.00 MHz 3: 800.00 MHz 4: 1100.00 MHz
Graphics:  Card-1: Intel 4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller bus-ID: 00:02.0 
           Card-2: NVIDIA GK208M [GeForce GT 730M] bus-ID: 02:00.0 
           X.org: 1.15.1 driver: nvidia tty size: 80x24 Advanced Data: N/A for root 
Audio:     Card-1: Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor HD Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:03.0
           Card-2: Intel 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset High Definition Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:1b.0
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture ver: k3.13.0-37-generic
Network:   Card-1: Intel Wireless 7260 driver: iwlwifi ver: in-tree: bus-ID: 04:00.0
           IF: wlan0 state: up mac: <filter>
           Card-2: Intel Ethernet Connection I217-LM driver: e1000e ver: 2.3.2-k port: 4080 bus-ID: 00:19.0
           IF: eth0 state: down mac: <filter>
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 500.1GB (2.1% used) 1: id: /dev/sda model: HGST_HTS725050A7 size: 500.1GB temp: 33C 
Partition: ID: / size: 28G used: 5.5G (22%) fs: ext4 ID: /home size: 192G used: 4.4G (3%) fs: ext4 
           ID: swap-1 size: 2.00GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap 
RAID:      No RAID devices detected - /proc/mdstat and md_mod kernel raid module present
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 54.0C mobo: N/A gpu: 0.0:55C 
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: 0 
Info:      Processes: 177 Uptime: 5 min Memory: 990.4/3831.8MB Runlevel: 2 Gcc sys: 4.8.4 Client: Shell inxi: 1.8.4 

[Pjotr]

@xfrank: try a newer Nvidia driver by means of the mamarley PPA:
https://sites.google.com/site/easylinux ... nvidia-PPA
(item 1, left column)

[Alley Cat]

The last time when I tried Cinnamon on my hardware at all was with Linux Mint Petra. I believe Cinnamon back then was at version 2.0 and since then the developers put a lot of effort to minimize the memory usage. I was having around 230 MB RAM used at idle and I believe that the amount today at worst should be the same. However my hardware is older so maybe this is the reason why my memory usage is lower than yours.

My LMDE 2 setup is using about 230 MB for Cinnamon at the moment, as well.

[killer de bug]

my idle consumption: 530mb. This is bad! I hope the developers will improve memory usage in the future.

Why is it bad? You paid for your memory. Why don't you want to use it?
If things are in the RAM, the system is more responsive...

[xfrank]

OK, I followed Pjotr suggestion to upgrade the Nvidia driver. But I took a different path. First, I checked in the Nvidia site what version of the driver is compatible with my card (GeForce GT 730M), that is: 352.21 (instead of the installed 331.113).
Then I added a bleeding-edge Nvidia repo:

Code: Select all

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa
sudo apt-get update

Then opened the Driver Manager, found the 352.21 driver, installed it. All went fine,fortunately, but no improvement in the RAM consumption. However, power consumption seems a little lower now: powertop inform about around 11-12w.
So, I must assume that my hardware RAM idle usage must be around 530MB. I'm OK with that. Probably this is the price to pay for having a super responsive / smooth OS on a good hardware.
Thanks to all for the support.

[Pjotr]

Too bad that you used xorg-edgers instead of mamarley..... xorg-edgers is very risky to use, because it wants to install more than just the Nvidia driver. Thus it puts your entire X.Org "on the edge".

That's why I always advise to use the mamarley PPA, because that PPA only delivers the Nvidia driver and nothing else.

[killer de bug]

Why not simply downloading the drivers on Nvidia website and install them?

[Pjotr]

Why not simply downloading the drivers on Nvidia website and install them?

I've done that, as well, but the result wasn't always good. Apparently the PPA's (even xorg-edgers) do a better job than the install script from Nvidia.

[xfrank]

Well, I have an update information about the Nvidia issue. Pjotr was right! Downloading from Xorg-edgers was a bad idea.Today my Xorg environment was messed up (bad fonts, basic gnome icons, etc.). I reverted the nvidia driver to 331 but nothing changed. So, I reinstalled LM17.1 Cinnamon.
This time, I didn't touch the Nvidia 331 driver, but I installed Bumblebee + Optimus (following this guide: http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions ... 1-cinnamon) . Bingo! This little program switches off the Nvidia card, and allow to load it on demand, when typing in the terminal "optirun" followed by the name of the program you want to run with the full power of the dedicated video card. This way, memory consumption at startup (idle), was only 330MB (*430MB after installing Dropbox and few more programs). And also the power consumption was lower, around 7-8w (checked with powertop). All seems fine for the moment.

Final words: Cinnamon is awesome!