A Look at Cinnamon 1.4 in Linux Mint 13 ('Maya')

Linux Mint 13 shipped towards the end of last month in two editions: one featuring GNOME 2 fork 'MATE' and the other with Mint's own Cinnamon UI. Cinnamon is a fork of GNOME Shell which made its first appearance in Linux Mint 12 'Lisa' and provides a more traditional GNOME-2-like feel to GNOME Shell.

Workspace Switching

In 'Lisa', Cinnamon inherited GNOME Shell's workspace switching style which, it has to be said, has its faults. When using multiple monitors, the workspace would only be switched on the primary display (now changed, you can change it back in 'Cinnamon Settings'), and the 'add-a-new-workspace-as-it's-needed' approach can be confusing.

In Cinnamon 1.4, workspace switching has been completely restructured. The hot corner at the top (or Ctrl+Alt+UpArrow) now reveals a Compiz-style 'expo', with a neat 'plus' button to add another workspace, and a cross in the corner of each workspace to remove it - no more automatic adding or removal of workspaces!

The 'Expo'

Cinnamon 1.4 keeps the 'scale' overview too (Ctrl+Alt+DownArrow), which spreads out all the windows within your current workspace for you, so you can see the one you're looking for more easily. Oh, and all of this works a lot better with multiple monitors too!

The 'Scale' Overview

Friendlier Panel and Mint Menu

The Cinnamon Panel is now more friendly to tweak to your liking - a 'Panel Edit Mode' enables you to drag applets to your heart's content without worrying about messing up individual applets. The Mint Menu now features drag and drop support, and some new artwork. 'Alacarte', the old GNOME 2 menu editor, has been resurrected for Cinnamon 1.4 and made compatible with Mint Menu so you can edit the structure of the Mint Menu to suit your tastes.

Menu editor, forked from Alacarte

The Mint Menu

Overall Impression

Whereas Cinnamon 1.2 felt very much like GNOME Shell, but with a few extensions added on, 1.4 sees Cinnamon really come into its own. Cinnamon 1.4 is highly recommended to anybody looking for a modern, up-to-date desktop with the traditional GNOME feel.