cinnamon 2.0.12 on ubuntu 13.10

Having in the past few days heard loads of praise of the Cinnamon 2 Linux desktop environment, from both friends and strangers, and now that installing Cinnamon 2 on Ubuntu no longer breaks Unity, I've decided to try it out on my primary Ubuntu desktop.

So, using the method below, I've started testing. A review of some sort should follow...

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gwendal-lebihan-dev/cinnamon-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cinnamon

UPDATE (several hours later):

So far, I'm happy enough with Cinnamon-2.0. It seems to run with a smaller footprint, more stability and more functionality and configuration options than you get with the latest Unity and Gnome-Shell.

I did get a few random lock-ups during early reckless tweaking, but I've seen no recurrences since I stopped messing around with extensions, desklets and applets (some of them still only properly tested with earlier versions of Cinnamon).

Now, after several hours of work, the impression I'm left with is all positive.

In terms of workflow, I did find myself missing a few features of Unity's Dash and HUD, but the old desktop metaphors still seem to work better for me overall. And though this might have more to do with my long term familiarity with those, I also think it has something to do with a general lack of maturity in the newer approaches to the desktop environment being worked on.

Its still early days, but if nothing major shows up, I could very easily stick with Cinnamon as the desktop option I choose most often at login - at least until the others grow up a bit.

NEXT UPDATE (... in the morning)

I think I'm changing my mind .. The new day has found me missing Unity's simplicity and that task orientated Dash and HUD..  Ah well, I'll decide later, but just now I felt crowded and in my own way - I'm writing this after logging back into Unity ... maybe for a long while...



LATEST UPDATE (... two weeks later)

I've settled in to using and liking them both - with Unity ahead in the number of times it gets chosen at login.

fedora 17 .. todo list post install

So, a few days ago, I installed Fedora17, partly because I wanted a straight gnome-shell experience, and partly because I hadn't seriously tried a rpm based distro yet. The short of it is, that I'm really enjoying the standard gnome-shell environment - especially how customisable it is compared to Unity. So much so, that I think I'll be working off this linux partition for a while to come.

That said, Fedora did take significantly longer to get the everything installed than either Ubuntu or Mint does, mainly because it does not come standard with any non GPL'd software in it's default repository - but with a fair amount of googling, all was eventually sorted.

Now, only after all of the searching and tweaking, and more searching and installing was done, have I come across a good, comprehensive how-to that would have saved me loads of time if I had only stumbled on to it earlier.

Smashing Web's Fedora 17 Post Installation guide covers just about everything you would want to add to a fresh Fedora install. Here's a list (not complete) of the packages I've used from there:

Appearance and customisation:
yum install faenza-icon-theme
yum install gnome-tweak-toolyum install dconf-editor

installed some of the gnome-extensions listed there (will list these later.. possibly)

a better software installer:
yum install yumex

to enable the RPM Fusion repository just install (this allows you to get at some of the packages below)
yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm

add the adobe repository for downloading Acrobat Reader, by running this at the terminal
## Adobe Repository 32-bit x86 ## rpm -ivh http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-adobe-linux ## Adobe Repository 64-bit x86_64 ## rpm -ivh http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-x86_64-1.0-1.noarch.rpm rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-adobe-linux

yum install flash-plugin nspluginwrapper alsa-plugins-pulseaudio libcurl

to play various Video formats:
yum install gstreamer gstreamer-plugins-good gstreamer-plugins-bad gstreamer-plugins-ugly
yum install ffmpeg ffmpeg-libs

dvd playback / ripping / players

yum install libdvdread libdvdnav lsdvd
rpm -Uvh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release.rpm
yum install libdvdcss
yum install vlc
yum install mplayer mplayer-gui smplayer gnome-mplayer

and my music player of choice:
yum install clementine

BitTorrent client and IM client:
yum install transmission
yum install pidgin

Tools:
yum install nautilus-open-terminal
yum install p7zip p7zip-plugins
yum install filezilla

IDE's:
yum install netbeans (no longer in repo - see below)
yum install eclipse
yum install spe
yum install geany
yum install cssed
yum install anjuta

....
To run yum you need to be in a terminal with root privileges.
just type:
su -
at a terminal, then enter your root password, and then paste in the yum install commands and wait for the installs to finish.

I found two commands that would not work from the howto. One was "yum install netbeans" - its been removed from the repo because it is no longer GPL compliant. Instead follow the instructions to install it here: http://www.matthewhughes.co.uk/netbeans-on-fedora-17/
The other was "yum install gnochm" - instead use:
yum install chmsee

installing AVG free anti-virus in ubuntu

you dont really need this in ubuntu, but its useful if you run windows as well, or if you want to test downloaded files for windows' viruses.

just copy-paste the commands in this ubuntuforum article into your terminal. Remember to change the .deb filename to that of the more recent version you downloaded.

OpenArena

OpenArena is an opensource first person (doomlike) shooter. You can find it in the Ubuntu repository using the package manager, or, for the windows version, check this mirror, or the others listed here.

I've played it a few times, and it plays well - much better than Nexuiz. If anyone wants to run around cool maps shooting at me, leave me a comment.

Nice that its free 'as in speech' software as well.

ubuntu for mobile devices

Linux evolves for mobile devices: A version of the increasingly popular Linux operating system Ubuntu will be developed for use on net-enabled phones and devices (including the new Centrino based UltraMobile PC platform)
read more..

just what i need to get excited about the old pocketpc, er.. again

ubuntu's feisty fawn

so, ubuntu 7.04 feisty fawn has been released, and on both my machines for the last few days. not that different from 6.10, but mainly i'm liking.

things like one click to enable compositing desktop effects, and that it auto installs proprietary drivers and codecs when you need them - much better for the new linux user.

still need to try out the new (now stable) ntfs read/write access using ntfs-3G

UPDATE- ntfs read/write works well - see this ubuntuforum post describing ntfs-3g installation in detail, or the ntfs-3g section of this article covering useful installs on feisty

Gimmie, a new panel replacement for Gnome, and how to install it in Ubuntu

Gimmie looks like it has some interesting user interface innovation - checkout this blog for how to install it.

will update this post after i've tested it properly.

UPDATE:20070620: still havent tried this -fuck it- and probably wont anytime soon

listening to the material world

been listening to The Material World on bbc4 again. Its a science radio show, and theres some interesting, er, material spread amongst the online archive of all previous shows. definately useful. Well.. worth listening to at least.

and while i'm here, i might as well mention that i'm still playing with ubuntu - its been about 3 weeks (i think) and within the last couple days, i've been brave/foolish enough to add it (as dual boot with xp) to the laptop as well. Testing the 686 kernel for the laptop's core-duo cpu now, and a lot of other stumbling around in the exciting unfamiliarity of linux. Ubuntu linux definately needs its own proper writeup here. . it will come, maybe, but that will have to be later.

linux with the ubuntu philosophy

I spent the last week playing with ubuntu 6.06 and i think i might have gotten myself seriously hooked. it might finally be time for me to stick with linux. The install seemed much easier than the last ubuntu distro i tried, the latest gnome runs much smoother, it took just a bit of poking around to get my nvidia drivers working at full resolution (the forums enjoy excellent support),