Faster app-launching in Cinnamon

The development team took some time earlier this year to investigate Cinnamon’s performance when it comes to launching applications.

It’s really hard to measure the actual time between the moment the mouse button is clicked and the moment the new application is rendered on the screen, with its window properly mapped, and the mapping window animation completely finished. It’s not something that can be timed accurately, yet we all agreed within the development team to say that it either “was”, or “felt” snappier in MATE and Xfce.

At the time, we didn’t know if it was just down to perception (animations, composition), or a feature (registering new apps with the session for instance), or a performance issue.

We developed a little script and a method to measure how long it took to flood the desktop environment with the creation of 200 windows. We could then measure the time reported by the script to build these 200 windows, and the time it actually took the desktop environment to recover from it and have these windows placed/mapped correctly and ready to be interacted with.

Both measures were significantly higher in Cinnamon than in other desktops.

Here’s how Cinnamon compared to Metacity:

  • Windows build time: 1s in Metacity, 4s in Cinnamon.
  • Recovery time: 6s in Metacity, 22s in Cinnamon.

From there, our work was simple. We had to find what made Cinnamon slower and get these numbers down.

We first started by elimination and identified that the following suspects had nothing to do with it:

  • HiDPI support
  • Theme complexity
  • Effects/Animations
  • Applets/Desklets

We then measured Muffin on its own (Muffin is the library used by Cinnamon to implement the window manager, but it can also be run on its own, without the rest of Cinnamon) and found out that although the performance was better than in Cinnamon, the numbers were higher than with Metacity. We therefore had performance issues both in Muffin and in Cinnamon.

In Muffin, we were able to apply two upstream commits from GNOME which helped tremendously.

In Cinnamon, 4 commits fixed bottlenecks in the window list and the panel launchers.

The technical analysis is available at https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/pull/7251.

After these changes the numbers were down and Cinnamon was just as fast as Metacity to build the 200 windows and recover.

In addition to this, the team also took the opportunity to improve the window animations. Although they weren’t responsible for any delay, they had an impact on perception. The new animations look cleaner and along with the performance improvements they make Cinnamon feel snappier than before.

137 comments

  1. Bravo Clem + team. Looking forward to Cinnamon 3.8 and Mint 19 with anticipation. In the meantime I’ll fire up by VM with Cinnamon nightly builds and have a play.

    1. Some things in the nightly builds ppa are going to start breaking for Mint18.x. We have a new Ubuntu base for Mint19 and things are starting to be updated for it.

    1. Hi Andre,

      Cinnamon 3.8 won’t be coming to Mint 18.3. It’s targeting the upcoming LMDE 3 and Mint 19 (for which there will be an upgrade path from Mint 18.3 though).

  2. Fixing Performance of Cinnamon was on my wish list a long time, thank you for making Cinnamon even better.

  3. Thats Ultra great Team. i ll check this out.
    Very good news. Mint is very great. Thanks again for make some great os.

  4. Great. I hope in version 19 the amdgpu will have better drivers. Atm my new notebook only works with integrated Intel chip.

    1. Updating your kernel (e.g. through Ukuu) might help improve GPU drivers. It fixed my Nvidia issues.

    2. For better AMD drivers (for Vega and Raven Ridge), wait for a 4.17 kernel build. The 4.16 is already at rc5, so I assume there will be a 4.17rc1 sometime around early April. Not considered stable of course, but better than no hardware acceleration at all.

  5. Good to know you are still working on issues targeting the upcoming LMDE 3 but the more important question is when will be the release date of LMDE 3? First quarter of 2018 is nearly reached 🙂

    1. Only next version. You’ll need to upgrade to Linux Mint 19 when it’s available. Not a huge deal though, they’re making a clear upgrade path.

  6. Great news. I’d not really seen a problem with Cinnamon windows but always happy to see improvements. Will these change help with choppy video playback by any chance?

    1. If you are having choppy playback here are a couple of things you can try
      1st get rid of adobe flash player just go to software manager remove adobe flashplugin installer
      2 if your computer is 2007 or newer and if you have an Intel graphics card that you use then remove
      the fallowing package xserver-xorg-video-intel this causes problems in 2007 and newer Computers
      then reboot Firefox will then use its own built in player and you will have the best performance from your video card since i did that on my computer i have had no issues i hope this helps also go here and check out my site
      that has all kinds of useful stuff for linuxmint users linuxmint showcase https://fredthreefeathers.wixsite.com/linuxmintshowcase

  7. One issue with any application performance is perception.

    There has been a real lack of attention paid to user perception on Linux as a whole. The use of the wait cursor and splash screens seems to be an afterthought that leaves users wondering what is going on.

    I believe if more attention was given to user perception as well as actual performance, Cinnamon would shine even brighter.

  8. Thank you for the education on how that process works. Nice job. My appreciation for Linux Mint and Cinnamon are greater than ever.

  9. Great job.
    Will be in the new Cinnamon support HiDPI different scaling for several different monitors (for example, first 100% scale and for second – 200%)?

  10. It’s great to see you addressing issues like this. I know it can be a lot more painstaking than the relatively fun task of implementing shiny new features but it is very much appreciated.

  11. Thanks to our forward thinking leader and dev team for news like this.
    Perhaps a little something extra in the donations this month is in order.

  12. Did someone say LMDE 3? I can’t wait; that’s a awesome distribution that combines the stability of Debian and the flexibility of mint!

  13. Great work!
    We use Libre Office lots but the current repository version is very old
    When are we likely to get an update?

  14. Can’t I just leave a thumbs-up instead of having to write in long-form how good this news is?

    (Are? I get a bit confused with uncountables…)

  15. The team should look and do something regarding the games performance, Cinnamon has the most lower FPS on games than other DE’s.

  16. Good news indeed.
    Are there any plans to implement new/more Cinnamon effects wtih better rendering and at least a notification when new applets updates are available?
    Is Wayland still compleately out of scope?
    I understand that design stability is good and even that my Mint/Cinnamon experience is good, the desktop is evolving at a very slow peace and start to feel a bit outdated. I know there are other options out there but I would realy like to see some love for cosmetic in the Cinnamon. e.g: the new Main Menu and new/better Desktop Effects (lamp effect etc.)

    1. I highly doubt you will ever see some of the bizarre Compiz type effects implemented in Cinnamon. It’s just really out of the scope of what we want in Cinnamon.

      Wayland is interesting to follow but right now it has too many limitations to really make it viable. It simply won’t work with the Nvidia driver which makes it useless for a large part of the user base.

  17. Hallo Linux Mint Team
    Gute Nachrichten,Herzlichen Dank.
    Eine kleiner Verbesserungsvorschlag noch. Ich wohne in einem Miethaus mit etwa 100 Parteien.
    Dementsprechend sind stets viele Leute online.Dadurch wird die “Liste” im Networkmanager zu lang
    und ich kann nicht mehr scrollen um die Verbindung zu trennen.
    Nur noch durch einen klick auf Netzwerkeinstellungen und dann Wi-Fi trennen.
    Vielleicht läßt sich das ja ändern, wäre schön…

    Gruß und alles Gute für Clem Thank you for all, I love Linux Mint

  18. thank you for your good work 🙂

    There are some points that I would like to see improved in cinnamon:

    * keyboard friendliness, for example:
    – super + n to access the windows in the window list, just like in win10, kde or dash2panel
    https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1160/dash-to-panel/
    – possibility of closing windows when using alt-tab (available in gnome-shell 3.28)
    https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=GNOME-Alt-Tab-Quit

    * improve performance/redesign of the workspace switcher.
    – it feels slow and laggy to use.
    – it might be relevant to observe that macos, win10, elementaryos, deepin and gnome-shell(+-) are
    converging in this matter.

    Are there any plans to address the points mentioned above?

    1. I don’t think that’s ever possible. Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu, which is a fixed release distro. You can check out Manjaro Linux with Cinnamon DE since it’s a rolling distro.

  19. Thanks, for this investigative technical effort in Cinnamon!
    It really sounds like a difficult task, but your result is really promising!

  20. Long time user of Mint, i had had a long affair with Compiz/Xfce until Cinnamon 3 that is.
    The notification retention won me over but now i am waiting for the new version eargerly.

  21. I am always happy to hear about performance improvements.

    Is any attention being paid to Cinnamon’s memory leak issues and constant demand for the processor?

  22. That’s great news and thank you! I am using Linux Mint XFCE on my Toshiba Netbook. Does this update lower the memory usage in Cinnamon? I would prefer using Cinnamon to XFCE, but I’m only working with 2GB on this machine.

  23. Awesome. I’ve noticed for the most part windows launch fairly quickly, (might be hedt hardware mitigating the slow down) but on occasion some apps take forever to launch. (mostly chrome)

  24. Awesome Clem & Team! The greatest factor in our choice to not use Cinn. here was it’s sluggishness. MATE’s responsiveness is easily noticeable over the current Cinn. We’re looking forward to the changes!

  25. Thank you Joseph for the honest feedback. It is on my wish list to transform Cinnamon in a “bizarre Compiz” 🙂
    As a user I am just trying to give my feedback and to share my view about what can be changed/improoved.
    I like Cinnamon and the way it is developed but in the same time I miss things here and there.
    Plasma has many nice desktop effects many options and it looks in the same time proffesional, clean and very polished, Gnome has the event calendar integrated in the desktop and I am sure many users would like to have them available in Cinnamon. BTW please do not show the applets/extensions that are not compatible with the Cinnamon version in the download list. I am looking forward to the new release and I am sure it will be a good one as always. When you get used with good the next step should be amazing…

  26. Looking at the “science”, and your tests:
    > ” … yet we all agreed within the development team to say that it either “was”, or “felt” snappier in MATE and Xfce.

    “Feeling snappier” can be psychologically tricked, by providing eye-candy, and perhaps ear-candy. Nothing can be a s boring as the Blue_Screen-Of_Death, made famous by Microsoft. Animated icons might remove the illusion of “Waiting-Time”.

    On the test-script that you custom wrote for this one application, there are other methods, easier for all testers of “Display-timings”. As you correctly wrote:

    > ” …. We look at the reported figures in the output and measure the time it takes (with a stopwatch) for the main window to defocus and the 200 windows to map themselves completely.”

    Using an on-screen-digital-stopwatch would be ok. Or setting to digital-on-screen-time icon to show seconds & it fractions could work. Then video-recording this screen would remove the finger-button coordination f he stop watch.

    Video-recording could be by any method: smartphone, or Linux application, using the Linux operating system itself to record in real-time. This last method (Linux video-clip-recorder application, in real-time)would better reflect real world users.

    My preferred Linux video recorder is RecordMyDesktop, because it allows real-time output into a video file which can be viewed quickly. Less resource-robbing are Simple Screen Recorder , OBS and others in Linux. The exact digital timings can be seen from the onscreen digital timer of the video-clips, without disputes.

  27. Thank you for a wonderful desktop experience!
    In Ubuntu there was a function where one could select multiple files and then just create a new folder with them, is it possible to get that in Cinnamon as well? It really makes sorting stuff super easy.

    Have a great year!

  28. Hello Everyone I have something I would like to share with you all I got board with the original green menu button logo that came with mint XFCE edition so i made a copy of it and made several color variations like red blue ETC. feel free to download and use them for what you want you can visit my site here
    linuxmintshowcase https://fredthreefeathers.wixsite.com/linuxmintshowcase
    i,am working on a helpful site to promote linux mint
    it has lots of helpful stuff but its not finished yet
    not only it has the logos but a slideshow and a video tour of linuxmint 18.3 XFCE Edition take care and enjoy i think you will really like it allot it is super easy to use
    oh and the menu logos are located on the documents and logos page

  29. In the upcoming Cinnamon will it be possible to scale the user interface to 300 percent (as in KDE), not only double the scale like it is in present Cinnamon? (I am planning to get a monitor with very high DPI).

  30. Languages can be added using the “Language Settings”. This conveniently installs the languages for Mozilla Thunderbird. Unfortunately, when the languages are removed using Linux Mint’s “Language Settings” the languages remain in Mozilla Thunderbird. Could Linux Mint’s “Language Settings” please remove language packs from Thunderbird when languages are removed from the Linux Mint operating system?

    What do you think?

    Linux Mint 18.3 Cinnamon
    Thunderbird 57.0b2

    Are you able to reproduce?

    Thank you

  31. Sounds good, IMHO this is exactly what Cinnamon needs before starting to add new features: a period of intense bug-fixing and optimization, to make it rock solid. Keep up the good work, Clem and dev team!

    1. hi,

      This happens often. We talk a lot about the new features but rarely about what goes on behind the curtain. We’re often talking about performance and bug fixing internally. I didn’t cover it here because it’s quite technical but we also moved to mozjs52, we also changed the way we load spices and in nemo we’ve also introduced changes to extension handling and view rendering which should make views both faster and more stable.

      Basically this happens very often. In this particular example we just had figures and a nice story to report. It’s not always the case 🙂

  32. Great to see the work put in to make LM snappier and improve the user experience – with excellent results. Perception is for a good UI, but more importantly, key to user migration from other platforms, such as Windows and even Mac.

    But I have to say, every time I turn on my workstation I cringe at the antiquated, clunky and back-to-DOS like start up process. Surely someone can take Grub outside and put it out of its misery? While I’d love to see faster window lift and fill, leaving users staring at a black screen during start up and then displaying what is probably the ugliest logo in the world before they can see the UI is embarrassing. Its even worse when dual booting and that pathetic menu list appears. Please, can someone just go fix that?

    DSurely fixing that would give LM the quality feel it deserves and bring more people to Mint. Getting people on board has a bigger payoff than UI tweaking, which is preaching to the converted – the current user base. Address the potential users too!

    1. I don;t think that that green linuxmint boot logo is ugly but its boring but as far as the menu button i got bored with just the plane green linuxmint menu button logo so i decided to do something about that and took a copy of the logo and made different color version of the same logo i use a red desktop icon theme and wanted a red menu button logo to match my icons
      you can check out my logos here if you want and let me know what you think
      https://fredthreefeathers.wixsite.com/linuxmintshowcase/downloads
      i think the logos would make a nice addition to mint
      you have to resize your panel for them to work so you can see the whole logo
      take care and enjoy

  33. Haha, I got this for kwin:
    make_windows took 165.602 ms
    close_windows took 15.121 ms

    didn’t expect anything different.

    1. Hi Clemens,

      Make sure you test the various DEs on the same hardware and use a stopwatch to measure the recovery time (close_windows isn’t relevant). That said I wouldn’t expect Kwin to have an issue. This was specific to Cinnamon. Other DEs varied a little in performance but they were all pretty much OK.

  34. It would be really nice if someone would look into the Linux mint boot times as well, so as to have the new linux mint 19 have a feel of being really fast.

  35. I am truly waiting to use LMDE3 Currently though, I’m on Debian Stretch. Can the folks at linuxmint please give a guesstimate on public release of LMDE3? I plan to make the switch as soon is it’s publicly available. I’ve been a hardcore Debian user for a long time, I love Linux Mint’s clean interface and availability of fixes over Debian. Sadly though I couldn’t bare with LMDE2 while it’s super stable and great, I prefer Debian 9 with Linux Mint Debian Edition. No more foreplay … 🙂

  36. I tried your testing script from github. Funny enough, the opening time was around 4.something seconds as in your test runs, while the closing time was rather lower than yours: 14.5 seconds.

    I wonder what influences Cinnamon’s performance most: CPU, GPU, RAM, other Software running? My computer is quite old (Q9500 CPU, relatively slow Geforce office GPU, 8GB RAM)

    Oh, and by the way: great job, thanks to all developers for my favorite OS/desktop environment in 35 years 🙂

  37. I found it: “Just like the previous version, Linux Mint 18.1 is a long term release that’ll remain supported until 2021.”

  38. Hello again and thanks

    I you will find the time, take a look at cinnamon and memory.
    In my desktop cinnamon takes 1.3 G of memory an d keep growing
    Upgrade from 18.1, now at 18.3, uptime 12 days

    This also affects my intel graphics card, sometimes designing windows at slow motion 🙂
    (I;ve change the driver as suggested)

    I close and reopen firefox when it consums too much memory.
    But logout/login cinnamon is a bit difficult

    Thnx

    1. Hi Dimitri,

      Try to identify what bumps the memory. Also, you can restart Cinnamon without loging out.. press Alt+F2 and type r, and then Enter.

  39. Nice to hear more news. I’m eagerly waiting for LMDE3. Is there an estimated release date of LMDE3? Or can I possibly do this: I install Debian Stretch first, and when LMDE3 is released, I add the additional mint repositories. Would this break anything? Thanks!

  40. if anyone would like different colored menu logos other than just the green original that comes with mint go here https://fredthreefeathers.wixsite.com/linuxmintshowcase/downloads
    i took a copy of the original logo and made several different colored versions
    for example green and black logo and red logo also blue and many more colors available
    you can download from my site anytime my site is safe and legit so no worries i decided to create something that i can share with others
    https://fredthreefeathers.wixsite.com/linuxmintshowcase
    you have to resize your panel in order to see the whole logo
    take care and enjoy and if you want let me know what you think on my website feedback page
    Thank You

  41. Don’t really understand the technical details but this is another of many examples where the Mint team are working furiously to make Mint as perfect as possible for us users and the best desktop distro in the whole multiverse.

    Thanks to you all, it’s not said enough but tremendous appreciation for everything you wonderful guys do.

  42. Curious about this as well.
    I have Mint 18.3 XFCE and Debian Stretch XFCE installed at the moment.
    Would be nice to switch from Debian to LMDE3 easily. 🙂

    There are so much more interestting things in Stretch over Jessie now.

    Interesting to hear the news about Cinnamon!
    I think it’s the most professional looking linux DE around, but I was always turned off by the slugginess.

  43. Hi,

    Will you also be looking at general graphics/GPU performance and memory footprint?

    I run Mint 17.3 and 18.3 with Cinnamon Desktop on the same hardware (dual boot), and the smoothness/performance of (for example) Google Maps (using Chrome/Chromium with hardware acceleration enabled) is much better in 17.3.

    Also, the amount of memory used by the base install is almost double in 18.3 (approx 800MB vs 400MB).

    I should also point out that Google Maps is much smoother in 18.3 with KDE than 18.3 with Cinnamon.

    Regards.
    Jan.

    1. For what it’s worth, I’m running an i5-4460 @ 3.2GHz (with on board HD4600 GPU), 8GB RAM, and 120GB PNY CS900 SSD connected to SATA3.

    2. It may also be worth noting that when I disable desktop icons, the graphical performance of Google Maps improves markedly. It seems a little strange to me that such a trivial configuration change should have such an impact on performance.

  44. True. I switched from cinnamon to mate because I was feeling something strange about application launch time. I will be among the first to try out Mint 19 cinnamon.

    All the same, kudos to the Linux Mint team. You created what many have not discovered.

  45. I think part of Cinnamon’s slowness is inherited from Gnome, especially with respect to the file browser. Both nautilus and nemo are slower than dolphin, for example. Dolphin is still able to quickly open some corrupted files or directories that nautilus and nemo can not, locking the entire graphical interface.

  46. great news

    is it possible to get a working ppa to add the new improvment to an 18.3 installation?

    or a guide to fix it manually ?

    it was mentioned that the nigtly ppa will soon break stuff. but a lot of users switch first when 19.2 or 19.3 is available, to wait for an “stable” release

  47. Hi, there’s been mention of an upgrade path between 18.3 and 19 but will there be an update path from LMDE2 to LMDE3? Thank you very much, look forward to trying the new Cinnamon regardless ^_^b

  48. Hi again, another question: would it be possible to adjust the Mint-X/Mint-Y theming to allow for standard app icons at some point, please? I love the tiles, but not every app has an icon (such as VSCode) and they all change over time. Just a minor virgo quirk. Thanks 🙂

  49. I’ve been using Linux Mint for less than a year, and I’m very happy. It is my first contact with Linux, after years in Windows, and Cinnamon DE has been really nice and customizable.

    I would just put a couple of snags to LM (I have version 18.3 installed): My wifi adapter (with a Realtek chipset), it did not work out of the box (it did in all the distros I’ve tried), and for a novice this it’s a big problem…. Will there be improvements for version 19? And with the support for Wacom tablets?

    Thank you!

    1. Hi Francisco,

      It’s hard to say for sure without knowing which exact chipset you have. In general it’s up to manufacturers to provide specs so that their hardware can work correctly in the Linux kernel without the need to add any additional drivers. Once a chipset is supported by the kernel, support usually gets better over time. We’ll be running kernel 4.15 in Mint 19.

      Regarding Wacom, what is the issue exactly? Wacom tablets are supported in the Cinnamon edition of Linux Mint 18.3 already.

  50. Hi, the adapter is a TP-Link WN722N (v2), with an rtl8188eu chipset. I could install it thanks to the work of https://github.com/lwfinger/rtl8188eu, but the intensity of the signal is not very good. As I said, it worked out of the box in all the distros I’ve tried (Ubuntu, Manjaro, Elementary …)

    Regarding Wacom, I can not configure all controls using exclusively xsetwacom (the pen buttons only accept the left click of the mouse). My model is Wacom intuos pro PTH-851. In other distros that I have tried, I can do it. The touch device does not appear when listing with xsetwacom –list (Finger touch), so I can only deactivate it from the Cinnamon settings (in LM 18.2 it did appear). It seems that the Wacom control panel interferes with xsetwacom. A common problem in many Wacom GUIs is that you can not assign modifiers in the pen (Ctrl, Shift … only with xsetwacom).

    I have seen in the latest version of Ubuntu an information panel of the Wacom buttons, which in LM 18.3 we also have, but it is not configurable (it is in Ubuntu 17.10.1).

    Thank you very much again and apologies if I have lengthened!

  51. I have a question with updates in Linux Mint 18.2. The updates are rated from 1-5 1 n 2 being safe 3 being cautous n 4 n 5 being unsafe,do I have this right? Can all be updated regardless of saveridy? Thanks.

    1. Yes, but if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing, you’d better install updates rated 1-3 only.
      Higher rank updates may cause regressions, which can be tough to deal with.

    2. Hi Francois,

      Level 4 updates should be applied as well. The best thing to do is to set up system snapshots. We worked really hard to improve and integrate Timeshift into Linux Mint. Once this is done you can secure your computer without worrying about regressions since no matter what happens you can always restore.

  52. Hi,
    I am newbie at linux community, I hope i find a solution for my problem .
    My laptop is Dell Latitude E6520. I have installed linux mint 18.3 from the official website and the setup done perfectly.

    The problem is my laptop has Optimus project enabled, I have searched the internet and some people said that this kind of laptops should disable the optimus from the Bios and install nvidia driver from drive manager alongside bumblebee but the laptop temperature was getting too high.
    I have searched for a solution for that but all ends in a message saying “Cinnamon got crashed”.

    Then i reinstalled the linux mint again and enabled optimus from the bios.
    Now while i am writing, it is been two hours and the performance is good, also the temperature is not going high or something. this maybe unlike that was posted in the Internet.

    As an expert, if this is wrong, Then what should i do ?

  53. Has this Cinnamon desktop environment theme issue been fixed which occurs if you are using a rolling distro and install Linux Mint default themes on it? It occurs on Manjaro but also Antergos basically any rolling distro when using Linux Mint default themes. Hope its already fixed now. Linux Mint Cinnamon desktop environment with default themes are what i like the most. 🙂
    https://forum.manjaro.org/t/manjaro-cinnamon-suggestion/35953/4

  54. What really needs to be fixed is the amount of memory that Cinnamon uses 800M to 1G after a full day using it, its to much. I believe that cinnamon inherited that problem from gnome 3, I have never noticed that before until I recently had to run a lot of java apps, and was monitoring their memory use, then I notice how much Cinnamon was using. I found some reports about it on github and noticed that is not new. I’ve switched to XFCE for now, but I do hope to come back, Cinnamon works so well for my workflow.

    1. Hi Alex,

      It depends greatly on the GPU and the drivers being used also. For instance Cinnamon takes a lot more memory with NVIDIA drivers. We believe it’s down to the libraries and toolkits underneath Cinnamon. We’re not really treating this as an issue though. The average consumption is one thing, what we really keep an eye on are memory leaks (which are use cases which make the consumption go higher permanently, i.e. when some amount of memory is taken, always, each time the use case happens, and never freed… even when that amount is tiny).

  55. I would focus on system UI consistency now that gnome apps broke into Mint 18+. There are several failures in Nemo + Mint X Theme (for example try to add the ‘home’ button in toolbar and you will see that is not drawn correctly! Hover the mouse over it too), The system monitor has also a drawing fault (tab buttons margins). The xed editor does not quit as expected when you edit -> click wm close button -> save document.

  56. Grateful as I will be for snappier windows, I have one long-standing irritation with many Linux distros, including Mint. I hope you’ll be able to do something about it in the future. Specifically, Linux seems to make no distinction between (1) fonts that are available for display and (2) those that will be presented to the user for use in writing — which for most of us is a much smaller selection.

    So each time I install a new version of Mint, I have seemingly hundreds of different fonts in my LO-Writer’s drop-down font menu, most of which are not in the writing system I normally use — Latin. This sends me searching through synaptic to delete the fonts I will never use for writing anything. This is actually the most time-consuming and disagreeable part of doing a new installation. It’s not that I’m xenophobic. I’d just like a simple user interface. I’d prefer not to have any of the fonts I’ll never use at all — rather than having a huge font list.

    And now, I can’t remove the numerous mathjax fonts, which I don’t use, because they are required for the pdf viewer — a seemingly new requirment.

    We could debate whether this is a Linux problem, a LO problem, or a Mint problem. But I can think of one thing Mint could do unilaterally to help. That is provide an option during installation for only localized language fonts to be installed. That — or something that accomplishes the same end. For the few times I end up seeing little blank boxes, I can deal with it. I wouldn’t be able to read the actual characters if they were there, any way.

    The Mint team has done a great job, over time, of producing an elegantly simple, quite functional human interface. I’m looking forward to them providing a simpler font list some day.

    Please excuse this if it too off-topic. Thanks again for a great distribution.

  57. But don’t you get the same huge font choice if using LO in Windows as well?
    If the developers provide only a small subset of fonts in the installation, I think some users will complain they don’t get the fonts they want or need.
    So it’s probably simpler to install a wide choide and let the user take care of the rest.
    At least IMHO, but of course you can disagree. 🙂

    Best regards,
    François

    1. François, thanks for your reply. I agree with you. It’s nice to have a wide choice available. But if the user had the option, during installation or upgrade, of installing the usual wide selection of fonts, or alternatively, just the fonts for a particular localization, then perhaps everyone could be happy.

      In any case, it’s been good to watch Mint and Cinnamon grow over the years. Many thanks and best wishes to them.

      Best regards,
      Minter

  58. I’m running LM18.3 Cinnamon, latest K4.13.0-37, on an old i7-965x, a R9-380x, 12RAM, on 2x100Gb SSD Raid0 without the slightest problem, except maybe Blender-Edge, but that’s expected, right?
    Cinnamon loads in less than 3s, apps in 2s or less, including Firefox : )…
    Obviously, you guys never ran Windows!!! Way, way slower, coffee-break kind of slow to load and apps take way more than 3s, especially Firefox…
    I LUV LM CINNAMON and looking forward to 19…

  59. You don’t need to do anything special to find the hold up points within Cinnamon or any part of Mint for that matter. All you need do is obtain an old box about ten years old, something flashy with a dual core cpu should do it and put the latest version of Mint on it. Definitely don’t have an SSD on it either, something rattling about at 5400rpm will be nearer the mark and could we say 2GB of RAM. Now that should flesh out the week spots of Mint.

    By the way, I noticed the Root partition needed increasing in size as once stable systems began running out of room. Perhaps you should be looking at that too, while you are about it.

    1. I actually reinstalled Mint Cinnamon a few days ago.
      I’m running an older computer, but the Nvidia graphics card I put in seems to have helped quite a bit.
      I’m disabling all the visual effects though (besides compositing), as I don’t need them, being used to XFCE and MATE.
      Cinnamon is really a beautiful DE, the best there is!

  60. hi my name is keelan i have fully installed second life to my laptop on the linux mint operating system and i tried to kaunch the program and it doesnt do anything i need help trying to launch this viewer with this operating sysem

  61. I am running LM 18.3 Cinnamon, and he fears Mint-Y-Darker, it seems not to work, behaves like Mint-Y-Dark. Has anyone used it working?

  62. Cinnamon sleep screen always hangs into black screen where I cannot type anything unless I hold Ctrl-Alt-F1, and kill the cinnamon process – which thrusts me back to the login screen. It has been happening so much, especially when I am running Chrome or Chromium with multiple taps. Seems to be triggered by notification.

    I am not loving Mint anymore. I am running Linux Mint with kernel Linux4.13.0-37-generic #42~16.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Wed Mar 7 16:03:28 UTC 2018 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux on a DELL XPS-8700

  63. Im waiting for a new LMDE 3 with cinnamon. I love LMDE more than LinuMint. 🙂 Thnx, for this edition!

  64. LMDE = Linux Mint Debian Edition

    The “regular” Mint is based on Ubuntu instead of Debian, but both are Linux Mint.

  65. it seems to me that everything gets updated for ubuntu and mint except for themselves. is this ever gonna change. also, when does any software ever come out for these things? i’m tired of having operating systems with no games or programs or what have you.

  66. I had a problem with LM Cin 18.3 recently. The updates involving virtual box upset the system and I could not recover from it. I am not an expert in linux but I tried with the help of Google and the forum. presently I am on Fedora 25. I am afraid to reinstall LM Cin 18.3 lest the problem should repeat. I am eagerly awaiting LM 19.

    1. Thanks for the link. But my system refused to boot to GUI and I gaveup. March is busy time for me and I could not sit with it.I will be back to 19 for sure and will not leave it! This time I will choose the the first option in the update manager and don’t go for level 3 and beyond at all.

    2. That’s a bad idea, regressions can happen at any levels and security updates aren’t exactly optional. You should set up system snapshots with Timeshift instead, to give you the ability to cancel regressions/updates and go back in time if anything happens.

  67. Maybe you can explain just how I could use ANY facility (including Timeshift), when I (and Others)
    couldn’t access ANY page, as the system Locked-out after 10 seconds?

    1. Sure (and we’re planning to document that).

      – Boot the installation media for Mint 18.3 (live USB or live DVD)
      – From the live session, launch Timeshift

      Timeshift should find the local snapshots on your HDD and offer to restore from there.

  68. Like your suggestions, however, I think that you are making too many
    assumption, w.r.t. the, availability/accessibility, in such a situation!

    1. If timeshift comes handy, I will be prepared next time! Thanks. We only learn by failures!

  69. How would Timeshift help in This (VB guest) situation, when you cannot get past
    the 10 second Lockout?

  70. How would Timeshift help in This (VB guest) situation, when you cannot
    get past the 10 second Lockout?

  71. Now LM Cin 18.3 is in VB. I took RSYNC snapshot with timeshift before update to Lev 4 Kernel 4.13.0.38. After kernel update It rebooted and fine. Then “GNOME-KEYRING DAEMON NOT RESPONDING” at shutdown. The next day “CINNAMON-SESSION FAIED” and also default-session.
    I could restore the system with TIMESHIFT using the live CD as it detected the snapshot in the VDI.
    The “GNOME-KEYRING DAEMON NOT RESPONDING” at shutdown continues.
    Perhaps it dosen’t like HDD Sharing (with other OS) or Full screen mode.
    The trouble started with intensive usage of VB with LM as HOST or GUEST.

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