Cinnamon is a GTK+-based desktop environment. It originally started as a fork of the GNOME Shell, which is a user interface and was initially developed by (and for) Linux Mint. Cinnamon provides many features, including: Desktop effects, including animations, Applets, Desklets, and transition effects; A movable panel equipped with a main menu, launchers, a window list and the system tray; 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.
Mint team released new version 2.6 of Cinnamon with new features and bugs fixes, rich settings to enhance desktop using Cinnamon Control Center. In version 2.6, and similar to MATE or Xfce, Cinnamon is an entire desktop environment built on GNOME technologies. It still uses tool-kits and libraries such as GTK or Clutter and it is still compatible with all GNOME applications, but it no longer requires GNOME itself to be installed. It now communicates directly with its own backend services, libraries and daemons: cinnamon-desktop, cinnamon-session and cinnamon-settings-daemon. This new version will be featured in Linux Mint 17.2 "Rafaela" planned for end of the June and in LMDE 2 "Betsy".









Release Highlights

  • A huge amount of work was done to review the CPU usage in various parts of Cinnamon and many improvements were made.
  • You no longer need to recompile Cinnamon to choose between consolekit and logind support. Now this is done in gsettings.
  • Support for multiple monitors was improved. Better window list actions and new keybindings allow you to move windows to other monitors (Super+Shift with arrow keys by default).
  • Cinnamon-Screensaver gained support for XScreenSaver modules and HTML5 screensavers.
  • Brightness and keyboard backlight are now also modifiable via multimedia keys while the screen is locked.
  • Panels can now be added/removed/configured individually and moved to different positions across one or multiple monitors.
  • Panel feature hiding/showing introduced called "intelli-hide".
  • A new "inhibit" applet was introduced which allows you to quickly turn notifications off or to disable power management.
  • The "System Settings" were redesigned and reorganized using a beautiful new look, layout and transitions.
  • The window effects settings were simplified and cool new effects were introduced.
  • Power management, brightness and batteries were revamped and merged together. The power applet was also largely redesigned, it detects batteries much better than before and gives a breakdown on secondary devices. It also handles screen brightness and keyboard backlight.
  • Nemo features a brand new plugin manager.
  • Efforts were made to improve ATK/Orca support in visual Cinnamon components.
  • The on-screen keyboard was partly redesigned. It now shows and hide on-demand.
  • Many other bugs squashed and enhancements made in this version. Head over to check official release.

Installation of Cinnamon Desktop

Warning: If you have installed any Linux Mint application, first of all remove that application(s) and PPA from your system. If you added our Mint PPA first remove it with this command (sudo apt-get install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:noobslab/mint)

To install Cinnamon 2.6 in Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid/14.10 Utopic/14.04 Trusty/other related derivatives open Terminal (Press Ctrl+Alt+T) and copy the following commands in the Terminal:

Since this is nightly PPA, after installation disable this PPA from your system.

To uninstall Cinnamon, enter these commands in Terminal:

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