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posted by janrinok on Wednesday July 15 2015, @08:30AM   Printer-friendly
from the lovely-cinnamon dept.

The new and improved dual monitor support primarily addresses a longtime complaint from Cinnamon users with more than one screen: there was no way to set up your panels independently. That's been fixed, which means you can now have a completely different panel on each of your monitors. In fact, you don't have to have multiple screens to take advantage of this one. The updates to the panel mean you can now set up your single monitor with multiple instances; for example, one at the top and bottom of your screen (though I'm not sure why you'd want to).

Wait, did you catch that in the last paragraph? Cinnamon 2.6 has a new feature that addresses a longtime complaint from users. In fact, there are quite a few new features that can be traced right back to user-submitted bugs and feature requests, which is another thing that feels increasingly rare in Linux desktops.

This release sees the Cinnamon developers focusing on some of what are sometimes call "paper cut" fixes, which just means there's been a lot of attention to the details, particularly the small, but annoying problems. For example, this release adds a new panel applet called "inhibit" which temporarily bans all notifications. It also turns off screen locking and stops any auto dimming you have set up, making it a great tool for when you want to watch a video or play a game.

It can be a challenge to strike a balance between project vision and what users think they want, because what they say they want is not always the same thing as what they want or need. Has this update of Cinnamon managed it?


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Rich on Wednesday July 15 2015, @03:30PM

    by Rich (945) on Wednesday July 15 2015, @03:30PM (#209417) Journal

    Really. The desktops are mostly good enough by now. Heck, GNOME 2.6 was. Of the "conservative" ones, there are XFCE, MATE, Cinnamon and Pantheon (in order of technical sophistication/integration). With those, I've come to the conclusion that first two (GTK2) usually work, while the latter two (GTK3) sooner or later, but so far reliably, crap out because of some graphic driver issue (and even the earlier ones may have quirks). That's why I run Mint with MATE. I'm just too reluctant to take the risk of getting stuck there.

    Cinnamon, when I tried it, eventually just froze. My current Elementary test box has bad flicker on Intel graphics (unless I do some magic waving with a glxgears window; still less pain though than the fan noise after a switch to the hybrid ATI chip). These issues, entangled somewhere between VESA, KMS, Mesa, and Xorg are nothing that desktop developers providing a distro (as the Cinnamon and Pantheon guys do) could sort out.

    What would be needed IMO is that the freedesktop people make a cut between user graphics and drivers, where all the user facing stuff (e.g. Xorg, Wayland, ...) runs rootless and and has no concept of integrating any hardware accesses, but just know a (more or less clean) API to below. With software fallback for each path.

    So that I, with my flickering Pantheon desktop could go straight to the Intel graphics team and file a bug like: "My desktop flickers. But if i switch off 'Accelerated 2D transparent blits', the flicker goes away.". That way there would be a scope in which it can be sorted. Right now, if I file the bug against the desktop, it will linger between "New" and "Confirmed" until the hardware is obsolete.

    This is nothing new; back in the day there was the AIGLX vs XGL debate. And for some reason, we're stuck with the (said to be temporary) mixed-up mess, while the then promised clean XGL never materialized. I've seen posts on forums who even smell a conspiracy there. (Maybe Wayland will help a bit in a way like when pulseaudio over-stressed flaky ALSA-driers, though).

    So, to the Mint/Cinnamon (and all the other desktop) guys: Don't worry, your desktop is totally good enough, and thanks a lot if you just made it a touch neater. But there's an elephant in the room, and that is that you get the foundations right, once and for good.

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