LifeInTheGrey wrote:A larger theoretical experiment that I have is to install Cinnamon in the same vein. This would likely require pinning to avoid regression issues with GTK3 and GNOME dependencies, but that is another story for another day.
LifeInTheGrey, have you gone ahead with this experiment? I did yesterday. Installed a bare console setup (I have a Squeeze 6.0.3 iso I use for this), changed repos, updated to wheezy, then installed Cinnamon as the only DE. I also installed mdm as the login manager and I always install Synaptic. I had to do a bit more tweaking than the same procedure using MATE.
General things I've noticed so far:
1. You'll need to install a terminal app yourself. Cinnamon doesn't pull in a dependancy for any terminal. I installed Gnome terminal.
2. You have to install the "menu" app in order to get Synaptic to work properly. It won't launch from its menu item until you do.
3. I still haven't gotten samba to work properly. No problem in MATE, but I'm having difficulties in Cinnamon.
Cinnamon issues. These are probably noted somewhere else already but I haven't dug through the tons of Cinnamon postings yet:
1. Dual menus. Alacarte is installed in the Cinnamon DE and gives you the expected Main Menu entry in Preferences. However, when you right-click on the Menu button and select "Edit menu" you open a different menu structure than the Main Menu app opens. There are two menu files under ~/.config/menus. You have cinnamon-applications.menu and gnome-applications.menu. There seems to be some, but not complete, overlap. Edits made in Main Menu, for instance, might not show up in the right-click edit session, but some do. And vice-versa.
For example, I deselected Brasero in the Accessories category from Main Menu since it also appears in the Sound & Video category. It did not dissappear from Accessories. I had to use the right-click edit and deselect it there before it was removed.
I also created a custom application launcher in Main Menu under the Administration category. It showed up in the menu under Other and was in the Other category when I used right-click edit from the Menu button. Very confusing.
EDIT: I found when I run the right-click edit option from the Menu button a process called cinnamon-menu-e starts. Alacarte, of course, starts a process called alacarte. Two menus, two menu editors.
2. Mouse pointer in themes is whacky. I like the DMZ-White pointers so installed that package and selected it in Cinnamon Settings under Themes/Other settings. The white pointers work in some apps, like Iceweasel, but the black Adwaita pointers appear when using other apps, like Synaptic. I'm using the std Cinnamon theme and Adwaita window and GTK+ themes that are the defaults.
There are a couple other small things that I don't recall right now but ran across while working in the DE.
Overall Cinnamon is a very nice DE but still a little rough around the edges. At this point MATE is a bit more polished IMO. Interested to know how you find the pure Cinnamon setup.
My sources.list file:
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deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import
deb http://debian.mirror.frontiernet.net/debian wheezy main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ wheezy main non-free
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/bimsebasse/cinnamonextras/ubuntu oneiric main
I plan to try some of the themes and applets in bimsebasse's repo
My preferences file. Std Mint, again to retain the font formatting Mint is famous for:
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Package: *
Pin: release o=linuxmint
Pin-Priority: 700
Package: *
Pin: origin packages.linuxmint.com
Pin-Priority: 700
Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian
Pin-Priority: 500