In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system, which share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphical shell. The desktop environment was seen mostly on personal computers until the rise of mobile computing. Desktop GUIs help the user to easily access and edit files, while they usually do not provide access to all of the features found in the underlying operating system. Instead, the traditional command-line interface (CLI) is still used when full control over the operating system is required.
The X Window System is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems.
In computing, the desktop metaphor is an interface metaphor which is a set of unifying concepts used by graphical user interfaces to help users interact more easily with the computer. The desktop metaphor treats the computer monitor as if it is the top of the user's desk, upon which objects such as documents and folders of documents can be placed. A document can be opened into a window, which represents a paper copy of the document placed on the desktop. Small applications called desk accessories are also available, such as a desk calculator or notepad, etc.
The development of Cinnamon began as a reaction to the April 2011 release of GNOME 3 in which the conventional desktop metaphor of GNOME 2 was abandoned in favor of GNOME Shell. Following several attempts to extend GNOME 3 such that it would suit the Linux Mint design goals, the Mint developers forked several GNOME 3 components to build an independent desktop environment. Separation from GNOME was completed in Cinnamon 2.0, which was released in October 2013. Applets and desklets are no longer compatible with GNOME 3.
GNOME Shell is the graphical shell of the GNOME desktop environment starting with version 3, which was released on April 6, 2011. It provides basic functions like launching applications, switching between windows and is also a widget engine. GNOME Shell replaced GNOME Panel and some ancillary components in GNOME 2.
In software engineering, a project fork happens when developers take a copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct and separate piece of software. The term often implies not merely a development branch, but also a split in the developer community, a form of schism.
As the distinguishing factor of Linux Mint, Cinnamon has generally received favorable coverage by the press, in particular for its ease-of-use and gentle learning curve. However, as Cinnamon forked before Gnome’s Mutter was ported from X11 to Wayland it suffers from having this legacy dependence. That is to say, Cinnamon suffers from the security issues of a legacy X11 compositing desktop where key logging and lock screen by-passes are of concern. With respect to its conservative design model, Cinnamon is similar to the Xfce and GNOME 2 (MATE and GNOME Flashback/Classic) desktop environments.
A learning curve is a graphical representation of how an increase in learning comes from greater experience ; or how the more someone performs a task, the better they get at it.
Xfce or XFCE is a free and open-source desktop environment for Unix-like operating systems such as Linux and BSD.
MATE is a desktop environment composed of free and open-source software that runs on Linux and BSD operating systems.
History
Like several other desktop environments based on GNOME, including Canonical'sUnity, Cinnamon was a product of dissatisfaction with GNOME team's abandonment of a traditional desktop experience in April 2011. Until then, GNOME (i.e. GNOME 2) had included the traditional desktop metaphor, but in GNOME 3 this was replaced with GNOME Shell, which lacked a taskbar-like panel and other basic features of a conventional desktop. The elimination of these elementary features was unacceptable to the developers of distributions such as Mint and Ubuntu, which are addressed to users who want interfaces that they would immediately be comfortable with.
Canonical Ltd. is a UK-based privately held computer software company founded and funded by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth to market commercial support and related services for Ubuntu and related projects. Canonical employs staff in more than 30 countries and maintains offices in London, Austin, Boston, Shanghai, Beijing, Taipei, and the Isle of Man.
Unity is a graphical shell for the GNOME desktop environment originally developed by Canonical Ltd. for its Ubuntu operating system. Unity debuted in the netbook edition of Ubuntu 10.10. It was initially designed to make more efficient use of space given the limited screen size of netbooks, including, for example, a vertical application switcher called the launcher, and a space-saving horizontal multipurpose top menu bar.
Linux Mint is a community-driven Linux distribution based on Ubuntu that strives to be a "modern, elegant and comfortable operating system which is both powerful and easy to use." Linux Mint provides full out-of-the-box multimedia support by including some proprietary software and comes bundled with a variety of free and open-source applications.
To overcome these differences, the Linux Mint team initially set out to develop extensions for the GNOME Shell to replace the abandoned features. The results of this effort were the "Mint GNOME Shell Extensions" (MGSE). Meanwhile, the MATE desktop environment had also been forked from GNOME 2. Linux Mint 12, released in November 2011, subsequently included both, thereby giving users a choice of either GNOME 3-with-MGSE or a traditional GNOME 2 desktop.
However, even with MGSE, GNOME 3 was still largely missing the comforts of GNOME 2 and was not well received by the user community. At the time, some of the missing features could not be replaced by extensions, and it seemed that extensions would not be viable in the long run. Moreover, the GNOME developers were not amenable to the needs of the Mint developers. To give the Mint developers finer control over the development process, GNOME Shell was forked as "Project Cinnamon" in January 2012.[3]
Gradually, various core applications were adapted by the Mint developers. Beginning with version 1.2, released in January 2012, Cinnamon's window manager is Muffin, which was originally a fork of GNOME 3's Mutter.[4] Similarly, since September 2012 (version 1.6 onwards), Cinnamon includes the Nemo file manager which was forked from Nautilus. Cinnamon-Control-Center, included since May 2013 (version 1.8 onwards), combines the functionality of GNOME-Control-Center with that of Cinnamon-Settings, and made it possible to manage and update applets, extensions, desklets and themes through the control-center. Gnome-Screensaver was also forked and is now called Cinnamon-Screensaver.
Since October 2013 (version 2.0 onwards), Cinnamon is no longer a frontend on top of the GNOME desktop like Unity or GNOME Shell, but a discrete desktop environment in its own right. Although Cinnamon is still built on GNOME technologies and uses GTK+, it no longer requires GNOME itself to be installed.
Desktop grid, wildcard support in file searches, multi-process settings daemon, desktop actions in the panel launcher, separate processes for desktop handling and file manager in Nemo.
3.6
2017-10-24
Linux Mint 18.3
3.8
2018-04-24
Linux Mint 19
4.0
2018-10-04
Linux Mint 19.1
An additional desktop panel layout option that offers a more modern looking theme and grouped windows.
4.2
2019-07-25
Linux Mint 19.2
Improved naming for duplicate applications in the menu (i.e. flatpak vs. deb packages), pinned files in Nemo, focus on performance improvements.
Cinnamon introduces X-Apps[8] which are based on GNOME Core Applications but are changed to work across Cinnamon, MATE and XFCE; they have the traditional user interface (UI).[9][10]
Desktop effects, including animations, transition effects and transparency using composition;
Panels equipped with a main menu, launchers, a window list and the system tray can be adjusted on left, right, upper or lower edge of the screen
Various extensions;
Applets that appear on the panel
Overview with functions similar to that in GNOME Shell; and
Settings editor for easy customization. It can customize:
The panel
The calendar
Themes
Desktop effects
Applets
Extensions
As of 24January2012[update] there was no official documentation for Cinnamon itself,[11] although most documentation for GNOME Shell applies to Cinnamon.[citation needed] There is documentation for the Cinnamon edition of Linux Mint, with a chapter on the Cinnamon desktop.[12]
New overview modes have been added to Cinnamon 1.4. These two modes are "Expo" and "Scale", which can be configured in Cinnamon Settings.[citation needed]
Extensibility
Cinnamon can be modified by themes, applets and extensions. Themes can customize the look of aspects of Cinnamon, including but not limited to the menu, panel, calendar and run dialog. Applets are icons or texts that appear on the panel. Five applets are shipped by default, and developers are free to create their own. A tutorial for creating simple applets is available.[13] Extensions can modify the functionalities of Cinnamon, such as providing a dock or altering the look of the Alt+Tab ↹ window switcher.
Developers can upload their themes, applets and extension to Cinnamon's web page and let users download and rate.[14]
Adoption
Cinnamon is available in the Linux Mint 12 repositories,[3] and is included in all Linux Mint versions 13 and higher[needs update] as one of the four possible choices of desktop environment, one other being MATE.[15] It is also an optional user interface in Linux Mint Debian Edition Update Pack 4 respin.[16]
Although as of January2012[update] still in the early stages of development, the reception of Cinnamon has been generally positive. Its supporters perceive it as more flexible and powerful than GNOME Shell while providing advanced features.[25][26]
In their review of Linux Mint 17, Ars Technica described Cinnamon 2.2 as "being perhaps the most user-friendly and all-around useful desktop available on any platform."[27]
In their review of Linux Mint 18, ZDNet said: "You can turn the Linux Mint Cinnamon desktop into the desktop of your dreams."[28]
A Linux distribution is an operating system made from a software collection, which is based upon the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one of the Linux distributions, which are available for a wide variety of systems ranging from embedded devices and personal computers to powerful supercomputers.
Rhythmbox is a free and open-source audio player that plays and helps organize digital audio files. Rhythmbox is designed to work well under the GNOME desktop using the GStreamer media framework, however it can function on desktop environments other than GNOME.
Ubuntu is a free and open-source Linux distribution based on Debian. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: Desktop, Server, and Core. All the editions can run on the computer alone, or e.g. in Windows. Ubuntu is a popular operating system for cloud computing, with support for OpenStack.
Compiz is a compositing window manager for the X Window System, using 3D graphics hardware to create fast compositing desktop effects for window management. Effects, such as a minimization animation or a cube workspace, are implemented as loadable plugins. Because it conforms to the ICCCM standard, Compiz can be used as a substitute for the default Mutter or Metacity, when using GNOME Panel, or KWin in KDE Plasma Workspaces. Internally Compiz uses the OpenGL library as the interface to the graphics hardware.
GNOME Panel is a highly configurable taskbar for GNOME. It formed a core part of the GNOME desktop in versions 1.x and 2.x. It has been replaced in GNOME 3.x by default with GNOME Shell, which only works with the Mutter window manager.
Strigi was a file indexing and file search framework adopted by KDE SC. Strigi was initiated by Jos van den Oever. Strigi's goals are to be fast, use a small amount of RAM, and use flexible backends and plug-ins. A benchmark as of January 2007 showed that Strigi is faster and uses less memory than other search systems, but it lacks many of their features. Like most desktop search systems, Strigi can extract information from files, such as the length of an audio clip, the contents of a document, or the resolution of a picture; plugins determine what filetypes it is capable of handling. Strigi uses its own Jstream system which allows for deep indexing of files. Strigi is accessible via Konqueror, or by clicking on its icon, after adding it to KDE's Kicker or GNOME Panel. The graphical user interface (GUI) is named Strigiclient.
Hildon is an application framework originally developed for mobile devices running the Linux operating system as well as the Symbian operating system. The Symbian variant of Hildon was discontinued with the cancellation of Series 90. It was developed by Nokia for the Maemo operating system and is now a part of GNOME. It focuses on providing a finger-friendly interface. It is primarily a set of GTK+ extensions that provide mobile-device–oriented functionality, but also provides a desktop environment that includes a task navigator for opening and switching between programs, a control panel for user settings, and status bar, task bar and home applets. It is standard on the Maemo platform used by the Nokia Internet Tablets and the Nokia N900 smartphone.
Up to 2014 there had been two Linux Mint releases per year, about one month after the Ubuntu releases they were based on. Each release was given a new version number and a code name, using a female first name starting with the letter whose alphabetical index corresponds to the version number and ending with the letter "a". There is also an OEM version for ease of installation for hardware manufacturers.
UberStudent is a free and open-source computer operating system and collection of programs aimed toward especially higher education and secondary students and their teachers and schools.
Mageia is a Linux-based operating system, distributed as free and open source software. It was forked from the Mandriva Linux distribution. The Greek term mageía (μαγεία) means enchantment, fascination, glamour, wizardry.
Nemo is a free and open-source software and official file manager of the Cinnamon desktop environment. It is a fork of GNOME Files.
Antergos is a discontinued Linux distribution based on Arch Linux. It includes the GNOME desktop environment by default but it could also employ the Cinnamon, MATE, KDE Plasma 5, Deepin, and Xfce desktops. It was first released on July 2012 as Cinnarch and by June 2013 it was ranked among the top 40 most popular distributions viewed at DistroWatch. The Galician word Antergos was chosen "to link the past with the present".
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