Cinnamon 3.8

Cinnamon 3.8 is now officially out.

Here are some of the most notable highlights:

  • CJS, the Javascript interpreter, was rebased on GJS 1.50.2 and now depends on mozjs52
  • Support was added for elogind, systemd-timedated1 (which should replace ntp and ntpdate in Linux Mint 19 Cinnamon Edition), and the admin:// protocol
  • Support was improved for GTK 3.22, CSD windows (in particular for their button layout and titlebar click actions) and LibreOffice (in nemo-preview)
  • With the exception of Nemo extensions, all Python components were ported to Python3
  • The network settings were backported from GNOME 3.24 and include fixes from GNOME 3.26
  • The region settings now support the ability to show uncommon/exotic keyboard layouts
  • In the power settings, “Shutdown immediately” can now be chosen for closed lid and critical battery power events
  • Cinnamon now activates the touchpad if no other pointing devices are present
  • The screen is now locked synchronously prior to suspend
  • Suspend, Hibernate and Screen rotation keys are now supported when the screen is locked
  • Cinnamon no longer allows DE-specific or poorly written applications to start the GNOME or MATE screensavers when the Cinnamon screensaver is running
  • Cinnamon no longer sets QT environment variables (distributions are responsible for making QT5 applications look good out of the box)
  • Titlebar themes are now restricted to metacity-3
  • Nemo-rabbitvcs is no longer maintained by Cinnamon but by RabbitVCS
  • Thumbnails can now be rendered for files as large as 32GB
  • Scale/Overview can now be activated via dbus
  • Xlets can now define column options when using lists, settings with dependencies now use a revealer, dependencies can now be inverted and defined on sections (not just widgets). Simple expressions using boolean operators can be used to compare values. The settings example applet was updated to showcase all these new additions.

Performance was also improved:

  • Improvements in muffin and the window list make Cinnamon feel snappier and much faster than before at rendering new windows.
  • Improvements in libnemo-extension and the way views are rendered make Nemo faster at showing the content of directories.
  • Improvements ported from GNOME reduce the occurrence of full stage redraws.

Look and feel was improved:

  • Window animations were refined. They feel smoother and add to the feeling of snappiness.
  • Symbolic icons give Cinnamon a more modern look and better support for dark themes.
  • The coordinates and size of some widgets and components were adjusted to fall on exact pixels (which results in removing a slight blurriness and making them look crisp).
  • The quit dialog no longer skips the taskbar

And also:

  • The nemo search was simplified and is easier to use. It’s also synchronous and much faster than before.
  • Rubber-banding, which was previously only available in icon view, is now also available in list view.
  • You can now press <Super>+Alt (or use the right-click option on the Show Desktop applet) to quickly see your desklets, without minimizing your windows. When doing so, desklets move above your windows, until you click anywhere.
  • Notifications are smarter. They now have a close button (which unlike the notification itself doesn’t send you towards the source application) and no longer fade-out on mouse-over. To avoid notification spam, they’re also limited in number per source and disappear when the application is focused, except for particular applications (Firefox, Chromium..etc) which use multiple tabs and which can send notifications for various internal sources. Notifications can now also show at the bottom of the screen.
  • The maximum sound volume was currently set to 150%, with the sound settings allowing to go all the way to 150% while the sound applet and media keys only allowed a range of 0 to 100%. Cinnamon now lets you define what the maximum sound volume is, between 0 and 150%, and all sound controls (whether it’s the sound settings, the sound applet or the media keys) now range between 0 and the maximum value you defined. This allows you to quickly reach 150% without going into the sound settings, but also to quickly reach any arbitrary value, whatever suits your speakers and your environment, whether that value is higher than 100% for small speakers in loud environments or lower than 100% in quiet environments.
  • In the sound applet, the microphone and the speakers can now be muted separately. An option was added to choose whether or not to force the aspect-ratio of the album art. Tracks can be changed by scrolling left/right (that option is configurable).

This is just an overview. There’s a lot more than this and this new version of Cinnamon also capitalizes on 6 months of development, and features a ton of fixes and refinements.

We’d like to thank all the developers who worked on or contributed to Cinnamon 3.8:

  • Abdous Kamel
  • Andrew Gunsch
  • Bibal Elmoussaoui
  • Bjorn Esser
  • Caldas Lopes
  • Claudiux
  • Clement Lefebvre
  • Dglava
  • Eli Schwartz
  • Fabio Fantoni
  • Felix Piedallu
  • Filip Ayazi
  • German Franco
  • Ilya Zlobin
  • Isaac Carter
  • James Ross
  • Jason Hicks
  • Joseph Mccullar
  • Jusix
  • Leigh Scott
  • Marcin Mielniczuk
  • Maximilliano Curia
  • Michael Webster
  • Mike Tzou
  • Mikhail Bodrov
  • Mochamad Arifin
  • Naman Kanakiya
  • Niko Krause
  • Odyseus
  • Robert Antoni Buj Gelonch
  • Salamandar
  • Schachmat
  • Simon Brown
  • Stephens Collins
  • Steve M
  • Thomas Anderson
  • Tobias Gobel
  • Vanov

And also credits and a big thank you upstream to GNOME (in particular to Philip Chimento, Florian Mullner, Cosimo Cecchi, Benjamin Berg, Luke Nukem Jones, Chun-wei Fan, Tomas Popela, Claudio Andre, Daniel Boles, Juan Pablo Ugarte, Patrick Griffis, Tom Schoonjans, Olivier Fourdan and rtcm) for their work on GJS, the fixes ported from Mutter and Shell and the stabilization of GTK3.

We hope you’ll enjoy this new version of the Cinnamon desktop.

209 comments

  1. Excellent news! So we don’t need to wait for Mint 19. When will it be available in the official repo? Thank you very much!!

    1. Hi Horacio,

      Sorry, you definitely do. First, Cinnamon 3.8 will mature, with bug fixes and translation updates in the month or so which separates the releases of Cinnamon and Linux Mint. Second, this time around it’s not compatible with older GTK and the libraries present in Mint 18.x or LMDE 2, so you won’t be able to get it via PPA or to compile it via Github, there’s a version bump in dependencies as we’re preparing for the new bases and leaving some of the old libraries and components behind.

    2. Good morning Linux Mint
      I am a bit confused.
      did you just say Cinnamon 3.8 is “out” but it will not run on either of your existing platforms?
      If that is the case is there a Beta that a normal user can test, or is it still inhouse only?
      Thanks

    3. Hi Peter,

      It’s available to other distributions so it’s important we announce it for them as well.

      Among other distributions, we always target our next Mint and LMDE releases, in this case these are Mint 19 and LMDE 3, both of which run GTK 3.22 and newer libs than Mint 18.x and LMDE2, so the timing is perfect for us to bump the dependencies and move to newer components.

      BETAs for Mint 19 are likely to be out this May and they will include Cinnamon 3.8. We’re already receiving feedback from rolling distributions such as Arch Linux.

    4. @ Peter E
      Cinnamon wont work on current releases because those are based on Ubuntu 16.04 and the new version is based on Ubuntu 18.04
      Maybe you can try it early if you run Arch (or Arch based) distro since they get the packages ready very fast.

    5. I use Manjaro Cinnamon 3.8.1 It still crashes at bootup occasionally but clicking restart cinnamon always works. The only main reason why I use Manjaro is the video playback seems smoother with less tearing on any player. However LinuxMint has always been way more stable and safer. I find Arch more exiting but less safe. Oh and yes Cinnamon is so much faster now it Awesome πŸ™‚

    6. Since Mint 19 is based on Ubuntu 18.04, have the issues with Lenovo and Acer computers BIOS experienced in Ubuntu 17 been resolved? I am concerned about any system based on Ubuntu above 16.04 until I’ve heard the problem is corrected.

  2. Wow, impressive list of improvements. I usually expect nothing too exciting from point zero releases, but there’s lots to look forward to in 19.0 from this alone.

  3. I’ve been using XFCE for several years. This weekend I had some spare time and decided to format my PC to adjust something in my SSD and HD. This time decided to test Cinnamon… WOW… I’m really impressed now. I gave it a try long time ago but I didn’t like it, but now it is a mature DE… and with all the additions mentioned in this post, I think I’ll really enjoy Linux Mint 19 Cinnamon Edition.

  4. I’m excited about these new features and improvements! Especially the snappier Cinnamon experience, with the new animations and better resource management. You deserve congratulations.

  5. Hi,
    First of all I’m no a high-level user of linux, I’m just a guy who prefers linux to windows, so sorry if I ask something ridiculous. Well, I just want to know if you guys have the intend to create a version of Mint with the Gnome shell like Ubuntu 18.04? I’d like to see the interface of Gnome and the estability of Mint together.

    1. You can install Gnome from Software Manager and then logout and select Gnome and login again.

    2. It can be done. However it can in my personal experience be a little unstable. However you should be ok. You can always just login to other desktop like anon mentioned earlier.

    3. “We don’t, but you can install GNOME from the repositories on top of any edition.” – Linux Mint

      “You can install Gnome from Software Manager and then logout and select Gnome and login again.” – Anon

      Hello guys, just to say that I did this, I installed it and select it in the login screen, but happened what Zentiac said, it became unstable. What a pity! But no problem, I’ll keep using the Cinnamon Edition of Mint.

      Thanks all!

  6. So, in short, if you want to run/test this now you have to install ubuntu 18.04 and do a ‘sudo apt install cinnamon-desktop-environment lightdm -y’.

    1. Hi Heidi,

      No that would give you Cinnamon 3.6, you already have that in Linux Mint 18.3.

      What you could do would be to point your Mint 18.3 APT config at the bionic/tara repositories and risk an upgrade, or install 18.04 and add the tara repositories, or install 18.04 (or Debian stretch) and compile cinnamon 3.8 from git (or download the debs for Mint 19 from github).

      There’s many ways for developers to do this. If you’re not experienced with all this, the best thing to do is to wait. Mint 19 BETA is coming.

  7. hello I think cinnamon’s status got better too much because of what you see in the writings a speed increase always works fine, excuse a rule related to linuxmint 19 the update manager could be placed so that possible updates are possible or it will be seen in a next version, as soon as I have no problem in the update form as it takes me now that I update a new update, but for the less inexperienced people who need to change the system and do not know how to update it would be a big security problem thanks for reading my comment I just wanted to leave my opinion that maybe help someone else bye

    1. I tried but it was unstable. LinuxMint will no doubt have a smooth stable release. If you have a spare drive or machine you can install another distro using cinnamon 3.8. I am using Manjaro with Cinnamon 3.8.1 right now.

  8. As it now stands, this new, snappier Cinnamon 3.8 will be available in both 32- and 64-bit versions for LM 19 and LMDE 3, and it will be the ONLY desktop environment available for LMDE 3, regardless, when it is released later this year. Here are my questions:

    1) Do you think its performance improvements will allow the new Cinnamon 3.8 to run on older, single-core 32-bit systems where its earlier versions would not …
    … a) in LM 19 ? ______ … b) in LMDE 3 ? ______

    2) If your answers to both 1a and 1b are “No” or “Probably Not”, do you think ANY OTHER 32-bit version of Linux Mint (e.g., LM19-MATE or LM19-xfce) stands a chance of running reasonably well where LM18.x-MATE or LM18.x-Cinnamon would not?

    I have an old 3.0-GHz P4 system with 1.5 GB RAM that continues to run superbly on LMDE2-MATE. I still find it useful for many things and would like to keep it going as long as I can with some version Linux Mint. Here’s my last question (for now):

    3) If it turns out that none of the 32-bit versions of LM 19 or LMDE 3 will work on my old P4 system, will I be able to continue using LMDE2-MATE on it? For how long? In other words, after LMDE 3 becomes available, how long will you continue to support LMDE2-MATE? (As long as Debian continues to support ‘Jessie’, perhaps?)

    Thank you for many fine years of Linux Mint. Here’s hoping for many more!

    1. Hi John,

      This feels like answering an exam paper. Anyway, here goes nothing πŸ™‚

      1)a) No. b) No. Cinnamon isn’t faster or less hungry in resources, it feels snappier because launching apps is faster. And it wasn’t necessarily slow before, there used to be a slight delay.. we’re talking about ms here, but it was enough to give a certain impression of input-lag if we can say so. That’s gone and so it feels snappier. It shouldn’t change anything in regards to running on older hardware.

      2) Xfce is the simplest and lightest edition. Very little happens in the background. It doesn’t handle or do as much as larger DEs but it does what most people need and does it quite well. It’s probably the best bet for an old computer.

      3) Once the system is installed (say Xfce) and assuming the OS is too slow, you can always remove services (printer support etc..) and install an even lighter DE from the repositories. In regards to LMDE 2, there is no official EOL at the moment. LMDE 3 and its upgrade path have an impact on this. Assuming everything is in place before the summer it’s reasonable to look at around christmas, but then again this isn’t something we can announce just yet. On our side we’ll want to support one LMDE release, so things should move quite fast, and at the same time we will leave time for people to migrate and the repositories will of course remain available for a long while after EOL is reached.

    2. Got it. Thanks. Sorry about the “exam paper” look-&-feel. (Perfect score, by the way — 100%, A+, Gold Star, all that.)
      πŸ™‚

      You know, it’s been a lot of years, but “once a teacher, always a teacher,” I guess. What can I say? Thanks again.

    3. My concern for running Mate rather than Cinnamon has usually been more an issue of what the *video* can handle rather than the processor (except for my old repurposed 32-bit netbook). Sor example, my x3200 is a re-purposed HMC (used for managing pSeries machines). It has a dual-core Xeon processor, 4GB memory (supposed to support 2GB IMMs, but have never found ECC DIMMs it likes). The video is severely underpowered (it was, after all, built as a system management unit) so Cinnamon will complain about it mightily. Mate runs on it fine.
      A couple other machines are like that too. Adequate processor/memory, lousy graphics.

    4. Manjaro with Cinnamon 3.8.1 uses already 1.3 Gb RAM at live startup so it’s pretty memory hungry. But it looks beautiful. Your old P4 is not suitable. Find some light DE like Xfce if you want Mint or even lighter like Lubuntu for example.

  9. Great to watch the progress made.

    Could you share data about memory and resource footprint?
    Is this version leaner than previous ones?

    1. Hi Royi,

      It’s hard to come up with figures. We’re observing very different memory footprints depending on the GPU driver being used. For instance Cinnamon takes way more memory when running on NVIDIA than when it runs on say amdgpu or modesetting. What could be done is a comparison between 3.6 and 3.8 on the same hardware, but because of their incompatibilities that would also a comparison of Mint 18 vs Mint 19.. we’d probably have to compile 3.6 on 19 to get stats to compare it to. In any case, this hasn’t been done.

      Many commits plugged memory leaks here and there in Cinnamon, and CJS was rebased altogether and upgraded to use mozjs52.. it’s difficult to say how much of an impact this has though.

  10. I’m not sure if it is fine to post this here, but, here I go…

    In the “Startup Applications” program there is a “delay” option. I’d suggest to add units to it. Currently I don’t know if the delay is in milliseconds, seconds or minutes.

  11. Dear Linux Mint,
    I have some question about that..Currently Im Running on 18.3 ..and asyou said that the Cinnamon 3.8 is not available for the 18.3 …
    1) So my question is that will I get Cinnamon 3.8 when when the Official Mint 19 Releases to Upgrade from 18.3 ??
    2) When is the approximate release date for Mint 19 ?
    3) The Upgrade process will be the same for 18.3 to 19 as we did in 18.2 to 18.3 upgrade ?

    Hopping an early reply from you πŸ™‚

  12. Cant wait for linux mint 19… ive been using win 10 pro… but not satisfy… cant use LM 18.3 since no driver for ryzen 5 2400g…

  13. So should I be able to install and test this on Ubuntu 18.04 (already running Cinnamon 3.6)? I’m running that temporarily, until Mint 19 arrives, when I will of course install it all freshly again πŸ™‚

    1. The cinnamon nightly ppa works well for trying in 18.04 without having to compile from source:

      sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gwendal-lebihan-dev/cinnamon-nightly

      Yes, this is UNSTABLE, etc. so not for regular use! My experience so far is that 3.8 uses a fair amount LESS RAM than 3.6 on the same system. Well below 200MB after being up for a day, vs. Cinnamon 3.6 often in the 260MB – 300MB range. This is approximate however as I didn’t do specific recording of 3.6 RAM usage.

  14. Hi Clem and Mint Team,

    thanks for all the hard work. Next to the performance improvements I am mostly looking forward to the sound adjustment above 150%. That was so far actually quite often a real Problem for me on many notebooks.

    If I may add a feature request: I would love an option where I could tell the sound applet to also show the audio input and output devices even when there is only one device available. This way I would only need one click to see if the connection of my webcam microphone or the hdmi caple at my minicomputer was successfully detected by the system rather than needing to dig into the sound settings.

    Best,
    Peter

  15. Will I be able to update from 18.3 to 19? I have many documents that I can’t afford to lose if I have to do a complete install.

    1. Even without a fresh install, it is imperative to backup your files. What do you plan to do if ever your system crashes?

    2. Hi, Chuck. Back your files up to two external hard drives. Put one in a safe place, like a closet or safe. Use the other one for year-round access to your important files.

      This is critical for anyone who reinstalls any operating system.

    3. @chuck
      what James said. Backup now. Make incremental backups.
      without redundancy you have zip, Just Do It… just like James said.

    4. Actually, you are not really backed up until you have a remote copy. Some may store it on a cloud server (ugh). I keep two drives, one at my brother’s house 180 miles away. Once a month I take the current copy from home to there, and bring back the somewhat older one for update. Otherwise you are just one house fire away from disaster.

  16. I usually use a laptop with an external 4k monitor. It seems to me that it would be useful to choose the preferred audio output device. Now I have to switch it manually every time I use the same laptop. In addition, I encounter some problems when I connect the suspended (sleeping) laptop with the monitor – it behaves in an unexpected way after waking up. Maybe I can find it all improved in the new Cinnamon 3.8?

  17. Hello,
    Can you fix display scaling on Full hd screen ? too small or too big.
    Cinamon is unusable.

  18. Hello.
    You mentioned that cinnamon no longer sets QT environment variables. Are future releases of Linux Mint still going to do it?

    1. Hi Karmo,

      Yes, we’re planning to set QT to look native by default. The way we’re doing this at the moment is by shipping qt5ct and configuring it by default.

  19. Linux Mint’e katkΔ± sağlayan herkese teşekkΓΌr ediyorum.
    Linux Mint’de dΓΌzeltilmesini istediğim bir şey var iki bilgisayar arasΔ±nda kablolu bağlantΔ± direkt olarak sağlanabilmesi ve oyunlarda bağlanabilirse harika olurdu şimdiden teşekkΓΌrler.
    SaygΔ±larΔ±mla.

    1. I’d like to thank everyone who contributed to Linux Mint.
      There is something I request to be fixed in Linux Mint : it would be great if wired connection between two computers could be provided directly and be connected during games.
      Best regards.

  20. If Mint edition was dropped, time would be available to work only on Debian based Mint and then Cinnamon would be ready more quickly….
    Bionic is Debian 10 Buster available too early, where as LMDE 3 will be based on rock solid Debian 9.
    Please drop Ubuntu based Mint edition, and provide only LMDE Cinnamon and Mate…

  21. Sorry if i am not in the right place, but i tried for first time linux mint, with linuxmint-18.3-cinnamon-64bit, and it worked great in live mode, but reboot after installation stop in boot menu. I tried twice, and still the same at second time. Where can i fond help please?

  22. Great job, Clem! But, when will Linux Mint MATE 19 be upgraded to MATE 1.20, as Ubuntu did for its 18.04 LTS version? Best regards, Jonathan.

  23. I got my ticket on Cin3.8-LM19-Hypetrain! πŸ™‚
    But don’t feel hurry. Take all the time you need to polish it and release if your happy with it.
    I can wait. πŸ˜‰

  24. I am trying it right now by installing Manjaro cinnamon community edition, so far so good, but it lack the theming part πŸ™‚

  25. Why Gnome 3.22 and not 3.28? Do you think that this will not create conflicts with applications compiled for Ubuntu 18.04 (Gnome 3.28)?

  26. I hope this new Cinnamon will eat up much less resources…..I began to leave the Cinnamon because since some months ago it’s used big resources, usually just about 700MB at the startup, and now about 1GB…I still don’t know the causes. So since then I almost use Fluxbox everyday now.

    1. I hope so, me too: in my opinion, Cinnamon is too expensive in terms of RAM resources as 7/800MB at the startup are truly too much!

    2. Manjaro – Cinnamon 3.8.1 uses 1.3 Gb RAM at live startup. It looks great and I have 4 Gb available so I’m going to try…

  27. I’ve seen others who’ve had the same problem I’ve had with Nemo. I read online that it’s been fixed. Not been fixed. Been fixed…and so on. There seems be a memory leak with it. I love Mint, but this leak’s been a fun killer. Has this memory leak in Nemo been addressed with Mint 19?

  28. i just love linux mint ….. it just runs on my laptop.its smooth . thanks mint team.. looking forward to linux mint 19.

    1. I’d like to have any similar response… in my case, for “ancient” iMac G3!

  29. I would be interested to know what this so called “memory leak” is that is being talked about, how does it manifest itself even. Nemo does all I ask of it and I cannot say I have noticed anything negative/bad.

    Well done to the Linux Mint team for a very impressive Cinnamon desktop.

  30. Higher memory/ram usage is not a “leak” as I understand it, but rather the use of resources. Of course ram is quicker than swapping etc so ram would be favored. I would assume that making the desktop pretty to look at with many useful features and some effects thrown in would all have a bearing on this. I find that Cinnamon and Nemo on my OK ish system function very nicely. Low physical memory machines served better anyway by a simpler desktop environment. For perspective – My win 10 uses nearly 50% (and climbs more) of 4gig ram on a basic surfing setup with a couple of required programs at startup. I’m just trying to understand what is meant by memory leak.

    If my Linux Mint works well and i’m happy (it does and I am) then I guess it must be insignificant.

    Cinnamon is excellent. Thanks team.

  31. Hello Forum. I have a brand-spanking-new HP Pavilion with 16gb RAM and a quad-core Intel i7. Even though I shutdown thumbnail previews via Preferences, setting both Display and Preview to NEVER show thumbnails, Nemo will still freeze up, just takes longer for it to happen with the thumbnails turned off. I can’t provide specifics, other than the fact that this has been happening since I stated using 18.3. I don’t recall this behavior in 18.2 and lower. Here are a few links to show this is a widely-known issue.

    https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=237354
    https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=117647
    https://github.com/linuxmint/nemo/issues/1220
    https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-mint-84/nemo-crashes-frequently-4175614062/

    While these may not all reflect a single Nemo issue, they do all fall back to its doorstep. I don’t even use Nemo anymore. I had to get an older File Manager to replace it. Which is fine. It sure beats having to kill the Nemo process all the time when it freezes. I don’t have anything else to offer. However, since this is an issue on my side, one that’s easy to reproduce, I will provide you whatever you ask. I really like Mint. I’ve had several of my friends drop what they were using to join the Mint world. I’d just like to be able to use ALL of Mint, and that includes Nemo.

  32. Hello, Congratulations on Cinammon 3.8

    I am a newbie and sorry if it’s a wrong question. The only reason I am prevented from jumping to Linux is Laptop’s battery duration in Linux systems vs Windows.

    How is Linux Mint / Cinnamon doing with battery life as opposed to windows for medium load, is Windows still the advantage because of official proprietary drivers?

    Best
    JV

  33. First of all I’d like to thank you for the best DE in Linux world. Conservative in best sense of this word, stable and good looking. The only thing it’s missing IMHO is something like JumpLists in Windows. This is really useful feature and it’s still not implemented in any Linux DE. Implementing it will definitely put Cinnamon on the top.

  34. Love Mint, and I’m excited for Mint 19 and Cinnamon 3.8. One thing I’m wondering is if there’s ever a chance Cinnamon may see Plasma style Global Menu’s. I was eagerly awaiting them in the next KDE edition of Mint, but then…

  35. I mentioned in another reply but wanted to point out again that in my Ubuntu 18.04 + Cinnamon 3.8 testing the RAM usage seems to be significantly better than on the same install using Cinnamon 3.6. After being up for more than a day Cinnamon is still at 171MB. I don’t recall ever seeing it below 300MB previously after running for a day, and even early on it would be at least 260MB, but would often get about 400MB, etc.

    So at least so far I see marked improvement with Cinnamon 3.8. Way to go Mint dev team!

  36. Hello Linux Mint Team!

    I have a couple of questions that I would like to receive an answer to.
    1. Do the desktop icons disappear in the same way on Cinnamon 3.8?
    2. On computers with wifi module from Realtek (723d) there are problems with connecting to the Internet after updating the linux kernel to version 4.15 (works on 4.13). When upgrading from 18.3 to 19.x, will it be possible to stay on the 4.13 kernel?

    Thank you!

    1. 1. nemo-desktop is a separate process than nemo (this was already the case in Cinnamon 3.6 though)
      2. Yes, it should be.

  37. ivt +
    I see that, with the kernel update, nemo is loaded badly and only at the second opening it has the usual appearance, with the indications of the empty folders and those that contain files. What can be done to improve it?

  38. I’m not sure if it is Cinnamon or Mint thing.
    But I really like the concept of Flatpak and I’m happy you integrated it.

    Yet there are 2 things need to taken care of:
    1. Update Procedure – Could you integrate the update of Flatpak application into update manager? Now it happens behind the scene with no user control over it. I’d like to be able to chose whether to update or not each application (Even chose which one to install when installing).
    2. Search of Flatpak Applications – Could you allow a mode in the Software Manager to search within Flatpak applications only?

    Thank You.

  39. want to contribute something i think you all will like this
    i have took a copy of the Linuxmint 18 XFCE menu button logo and made several different color versions like mint-x red mint-x blue and versions to match every mint-x theme available in mint
    plus some others you can view and download them off of my safe site Linuxmint Showcase here is the address to view and download these logos feel free to use them anyway you want
    https://fredthreefeathers.wixsite.com/linuxmintshowcase/downloads
    these logos will work in any edition of mint i have tested them
    you need to resize your panel bigger than default to see the whole logo in order for these to work size 50 in XFCE and Mate
    i use XFCE and my moms computer runs Mate and we both use one of these new logos to match our themes the default green logo is nice but it does not match mint-x orange icons and possibly some other themes all these new logos should match most any theme there is for mint Take Care and Enjoy
    you people are awesome Thanks
    Sincerely Shawn

    1. It’s a bit normal and I was expecting it to be so, as Mint has/had to wait for Debian first and then for Ubuntu.. By 19, will be #1 again, I have no doubt.

      I also would like to say -on the contrary of some previous comments- that still supporting 32 bit is a big advantage (i.e. as an ordinary user, I haven’t tested or tried many distros among top 10, just because they’re only 64 bit, though I wonder about them, just to have a see.. ) And there are still thousands of (mostly 32bit) computers especially belonging to the governments (which are also waiting to turn into Linux – I hope in my country it will be so soon)..

      And especially, I find it the most important thing, that Mint Team declared above, that no data will be collected or sent anywhere (In fact that is one of the main things what makes it Linux).. this is also the best thing and an advantage, because people always dislike such ideas all around the world, feel uncomfortable and run away.. That’s 2×2=4 ..(no matter how many times you try to tell it is only technical data about the system etc.)

      It’s been like a letter again πŸ™‚ Thanks to all Mint Team .. Excited for 19 .

    1. Yes, there will be 32bit in Mint 19 .
      (I don’t remember where I read this answer by Mint Team, maybe in previous month’s blogs)

    2. I’ve found the official answer :

      ( https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3555#comments )

      Monthly News – April 2018 – April 30, 2018 by Linux Mint :

      Linux Mint 19.x releases (19, 19.1, 19.2, 19.3) will be available in 3 editions (Cinnamon, MATE, Xfce), both in 32 and 64-bit.

      LMDE 3 will be available in a single edition (Cinnamon), both in 32 and 64-bit.

      Ubuntu ships with β€œubuntu-report”, which collects metrics and usage data. This package won’t be present in Linux Mint, no data will be collected or sent.

  40. Hi Clem,

    At first, some small suggestions for Cinnamon:
    – If you unmount a volume / USB-stick from nemo or task panel a warning appears if the data is being written. But there is no warning if you unmount it from the desktop.This could be dangerous, especially for NTFS;
    – With “intelligently hide panel” option it’s better to position the desktop icons like with “always show panel” as the panel is not hidden most of the time.

    Secondly, I really wonder why you choose Cinnamon instead of MATE for LMDE3. If one chooses LMDE, he normally wants more of “light, fast and stable” than of “nice and user-friendly”, am I wrong? πŸ™‚

    Thank you for your great work!
    Sergei

    1. I was just going to write a comment about this. I’ve been reading comments that consider Cinnamon “heavy” .. and Mate mid-weight or so.. and in some places some say that latest Mate was even close to Xfce (!)…

      Yesterday and today I installed first Kubuntu (KDE) and today Ubuntu Mate (latest, 18.04 32 bit and minimal installations both).. Here’s a simple home-made comparison on a single-core 13 years old veteran HP laptop (1.73 GHz Pentium M & 2GB DDR2 Ram)

      (All when idling when first started, and then with no windows open after some usage) :

      * My Mint Cinnamon begins with around 280 MB Ram and around % 4-6 Cpu .. and after some time, Ram is always under 490 MB with no windows open..

      * Kubuntu began with 265MB Ram (yes , I’m surprised,too) and after a while, 495, but did not exceed 500 MB Ram and % 4 – 6 Cpu.. (Yes, KDE is known to be the heaviest, I was afraid first, then surprised)

      *Ubuntu Mate began with 505 MB on idle, and became 710 MB (Yes, really) and the fan worked non-stop, the Cpu was also about % 10 ..

      * And the Xfce MX begins with 180 MB Ram on idle and never exceeds 290 MB with no windows open and the Cpu is generally %1-2 ..

      (Ok, MX is not exactly the same familiy, but just to give an idea of Xfce and the other distos are relatives..)

      So my conclusion is: On the contrary to some comments above and on Distrowatch page (that say Cinnamon is a waste of time etc..) I think it is better to focus only on Cinnamon and Xfce .. (Mate is something similar but not light or midweight and that one is a waste of time)..

    2. My values for freshly installed 64-bit OS are approx. 550 MB for 18.3 MATE and 700 MB for 18.3 Cinnamon whereas 17.3 took ~400 MB both in Cinnamon and MATE. After some months of use 18.3 Cinnamon ‘eats’ 1GB of memory which is slightly more than expected for a Linux Distro. 32-bit is another story, even Win7 takes only 400MB. I used MATE with 18.0 – 18.2 and it was more stable and responsive than Cinnamon but it might be also system-dependent.

    3. @KCN,
      What you are saying is disappointing.
      It means Cinnamon gets heavier each release.

      I really want to see the other way around.

      Let applications add features.
      The OS should be as lean and fast as possible.

  41. Hello,

    Many congratulations on your work. Super excited for the upcoming version. I’m a bit overly cautious about bugs and app incompatibilities. So if I decide to wait until 19.1, will the upgrade from 18.3 be seamless as well? I’m quite sure it will, but still wanted to confirm.

    Thanks!

  42. Will It Be Possible to turn automatic updates to manual like before
    and is there any instances that auto update will reboot my system automatically i hate that when that happens because i have been in the middle of something on windows and it just reboots without warning and my work is lost please if someone could give me an answer i would appreciate that Thanks

    1. Automatic updates are turned off by default. And even when you enable automatic updates, there is no automatic reboot.

    2. Automatic updates is an opt-in, it’s not something that’s enabled by default. Whether it’s on or not, the computer never reboots automatically.

  43. hey together,

    how to install Cinnamon 3.8 on Mint 18.3?? Just for haveing a test of it. And how to switch from Mate to Cinnamon after haveing installed it??

    Thanks.

  44. hello I new Linux mint user i install about 4 weeks now but now when i play video is stuck and even the speed of open files is very low can u help me My RAM 2gb hdd 500 but for mint is 59GB and Swap size is 2GB

    1. @Nomen luni
      Maybe so, but probably Not. A Responsible admin would make such an announcement, and a “final post” would appear when anyone clicks on http://segfault.linuxmint.com/
      —-
      **if this Blog is intended to be current and informative it is missing the mark (besides the basic difficulty of following threads)

  45. Hi. Great news. But there is a old bug in Cinnamon DE, with the menu applet. Sometimes, when clicking on the Menu button, the Menu shows up for a short time and then dissapears. The button has to be clicked once more for the Menu to re-appear and after that it shows up normally, for a while. Until the phenomenon manifests again. Can you please solve this once and forever? And maybe there is the time to offer alternatives to this, let’s be honest, flat and outdated launcher.

    Thank you very much for your work.

    1. @JosephM: I’ve seen it many times, on multiple computers, starting with older versions of Mint and finishing with the actual version. I have no reason to “invent” false issues.
      Anyway, I see that from the developers part is no interest regarding the reported problem. Well…

    2. It has nothing to do with lack of interest. I’ve never heard of the bug. Did you report it and maybe I’ve missed it? I’ve also never experienced it and have no way to reproduce it. That makes it nearly impossible to solve on our end.

    3. I have seen it. I changed to a different mouse and the problem went away. Cause was dirty left button mouse switch. – Mike

  46. Heedermann Thank You Very Much For Your Answer
    I,am looking forward to the auto update feature this will come in handy for administering my clients systems totally awesome i like

  47. Hello Mint team, I am enjoying Linux Mint for the last three years or so since I migrated from Windows. One thnig bothers me is the update procedure when I am required to authenticate the updates which I do not understand at all and in no way capable of choosing. Can’t we make the security updates and any other critical updates automatically installed. I understand Ubuntu 18.04 does that. Thanks

    1. Hi Prakash,

      Yes, absolutely, but we need to protect users first. We integrated timeshift in 18.3, it happened late in the development cycle. In 19 we’re developing the update strategy around it, we ensure you’ve got snapshots in place, we then push for updates and we’re planning to backport all of that to 18.x once it passes through the BETA phase in 19.

  48. Mint jest super! udało mi się przekonać do Linux Minta rodziców, i sąsiada. Stabilny i nie ma problemów jak ciągle z windowsem gdzie do mnie dzwonili żebym coś naprawił.

  49. Having an issue in Antergos Cinnamon. when playing full screen games, the panal is still showing over the game.

  50. @Peter E
    No, I’ve just played a little bit with Ubuntu-Mate live USB. It’s interesting what was “trimmed” from original Mate DE in Mint’s Mate edition?

  51. You are of course welcome to your opinion Sir, but to make generalizations about Mint Mate DE and call it waste of time is entirely just an opinion and not at all the popular one. I myself and many that I know enjoy Mint Mate enough to make dozens and dozens of cash donations and there are many thousands of us. So put that in your pipe and smoke it. πŸ™‚

  52. Since 18.x there’s a conflict between Cinnamon and recent AMD Graphics Proprietary Software, This conflict was solved in this version?

    1. That would most likely require a little more work from AMD first, or work-arounds. The OpenCL libraries can be extracted from the amdgpu-pro drivers and they can be made to work but I haven’t been able at all to get the main amdgpu-pro drivers to work, they just keel over.

    2. If you use OpenSource, will display a message about rendering mode, if u install proprietary, cinnamon will crash. In Mate and KDE it doesn’t happen.

    1. Sorry for triggering this kind of discussion. Actually, all Mint DE’s are great and really well-integrated into the whole OS. This may be not so important for experienced Linux users but for a typical Windows user it is a big weight on the Linux side of the balance. Thank you!

  53. I would like to ask about bad behavior I am experiencing on 18.3/Cinnamon and a possible fix/change in respectively 19/3.8.

    It’s about having second input layout and also the option to have separate layout for each window + use default layout for new windows.
    So basically the system doesn’t recognize the locked screen or β€œmenu” popup as new windows, means that the active input layout always depends on the previous window in these cases no matter what.
    And for example when I want to unlock the machine it can be a random layout active.
    I think it is quite non intuitive and can be improved a bit.
    Some thoughts on this?

    PS not 100% sure how it behaves on other distros/DEs but I think its the same.

  54. Great work, thank you! What’s the status for snap and Flatpak packages integration in Linux Mint? How do you go about installing such packages? Also, do you receive updates like for regular packages?

    1. Flatpak integration was improved, support for flatpakfref and flatpakrepo was added and flatpak apps now look native thanks to a Mint-Y flatpak theme. Snap can be installed from the repositories to access the Ubuntu Store.

  55. Bug in Nemo 3.6 (Mint 18.3) which I hope will be addressed in Mint 19:
    After inserting a USB flash drive, it initially shows the amount of free space in the left hand pane of Nemo when hovering over it’s icon. After copying several large video files to the flash drive, it doesn’t update on the amount of remaining free space, but continues to show the original amount. Update of the remaining free space doesn’t occur until I unplug the flash drive and plug it in again. Is this a known bug, and will it be addressed before the final release of Mint 19 Cinnamon edition (Nemo 3.8)?

    Loving what I’m reading so far in this blog and in the replies to questions asked and suggestions offered. πŸ™‚

  56. Having an issue in Arch since the last update of cinnamon. When Playing full screen video the panal is still showing over the video.(with video players or with web navigators). muffin 3.8.1-1 Cinnamon 3.8.2

  57. I’m currently running Linux Mint 17.2 and want to upgrade Cinnamon to the latest version that will run with my version of Mint. Will 3.8 run on Mont 17.2? If not what version of Cinnamon can I upgrade to and what is the best way to upgrade.

    Thanks in advance!

    1. As noted earlier in the thread, Cinnamon 3.8 will not run on any version of Mint older than Mint 19. You’ll have to wait until 19 is released. I’m sure an upgrade path will be provided from 18.3 to 19. In your case you’ll have to upgrade to 18 first and then to 19.

  58. I am writing from a Toshiba satellite c50d-b-120 laptop with Manjaro cinnamon 17.1.10 from DE cinnaon 3.8. I have used LM so far for many years but I was not able to install it on my laptop. I installed LM 18.3 on it, however, to no avail. After installation using UEFI, the system does not get up. I have tried several times always with the same result. I also tried Ubuntu 18.04 but after the first update the effect was the same as with LM. It must be an installer error because Manjaro installation is ok. I am not a follower of Manjaro, but I use it a must. Please check installer.

  59. Please turn off the time trigger for the critical condition of the battery and change the critical battery level and the action for it at 5%.

  60. In the next version of Linux Mint will Nemo feature the new features of Caja?

    https://ubuntu-mate.org/blog/

    The File Manager (Caja)
    We’ve added some new features to the file manager (Caja).

    Added Advanced bulk rename – A batch renaming extension.
    Added Encryption – An extension which allows encryption and decryption of files using GnuPG.
    Added Hash checking – An extension for computing and validating message digests or checksums.
    Added Advanced ACL properties – An extension to edit access control lists (ACLs) and extended attributes (xattr).
    Updated Folder Color – An extension for applying custom colours and emblems to folders and files.
    Replaced the deprecated caja-gksu with caja-admin which uses PolicyKit to elevate permissions in the file manager for administrative tasks.

    1. There already is a hash checking extension for Nemo, its called nemo-gtkhash , I use this all the time, works very well, it adds a ‘Digests’ tab to file properties so you can create or check hashes :o)

      I admit I would love to have this installed by default or already part of Nemo, its so useful for checking downloads as well as looking files up in a web search, other times I use it for quick archive file comparisons, very useful utility :o)

  61. O libreoffice nao funciona corretamente no linux mint e mem no elementary os, o writer fecha inesperadamente, porΓ©m isto nΓ£o acontece no Ubuntu 18.04, por enquanto vou ficando com o kde.

  62. I have no problem in the update form as it takes me now that I update a new update, but for the less inexperienced people who need to change the system and do not know how to update it would be a big security problem thanks for reading my comment I just wanted to leave my opinion that maybe help someone else bye

  63. Hello, Congratulations on Cinammon 3.8

    I am a newbie and sorry if it’s a wrong question. The only reason I am prevented from jumping to Linux is Laptop’s battery duration in Linux systems vs Windows.

    How is Linux Mint / Cinnamon doing with battery life as opposed to windows for medium load, is Windows still the advantage because of official proprietary drivers?

  64. TOPSTARS****
    Now running Cinamon 3.8 under the hood (DualBoot Win10+Cin3.8 – Lenovo ideapad 300). Feels gooooood! Loving it!!

  65. Hi
    I know this is not a real issue but I have a question:
    why the cinnamon Desktop looks more beautiful and classy in Fedora 27-28 than on Linux Mint .. although you are the developer choose the Ubuntu platform to present your product!
    Just wondering!!

  66. hi, you mention that mint-y will be the new default theme. i hope you can please keep mint-x fully updated for those of us (like me) who don’t like (at all) flat themes! thankyou.

    looking forward to lm19 a lot since the xenial base is getting very long in the tooth…

    cheers.

  67. I’m looking forward to upgrading to LMDE3. Hopefully I can get Pidgin use the stupid skype for business that has been rolled out here…
    Thanks for the hard work!

  68. I appriciate very much your job. So in the end of this month I’ll make my third donation πŸ™‚

  69. I am using Cinnamon version 3.8.2 with the Tumbleweed rolling distro, successfully updated from Cinnamon 3.6 after resolving the openSUSE issue described at https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1091701 . (Which had nothing to do with the Mint team.) Everything seems to work, with two exceptions:

    –> The jonbrett Feeds Reader now works properly on only one of three TW computers. On the other two, the space for the icon is taken up by a gray oblong. Right-clicking on the icon pulls up the configuration menu, but no feeds.

    –> I can’t seem to use my favorite ‘Atlanta’ window borders. I believe I used to put them in /usr/share/themes, but Cinnamon doesn’t see them. (Hardly the end of the world, but worth mentioning.)

    While I’m posting: please let me offer thanks and congratulations for the excellent work of Clement Lefebvre and the Mint team in bringing this great desktop to the Linux world. No other desktop environment comes close, at least for me. You richly deserve your success!

    A question: I have never found a forum for discussion of issues related only to Cinnamon, as used by non-Mint distros. (openSUSE, Arch, Antergos, Manjaro, etc.) If anyone can provide news of such a forum, I will be grateful.

  70. Hello, unsure why my question was removed, but I was asking about if xorg-server would be 1.19.*

  71. I’m not sure my question is right for this thread. I’m not a computer whiz by any stretch though I can usually figure what I need. I don’t do games of any sort, only search the common internet a bit most days, and do some (not much) email. I desire to switch from Windows to Linux. Searching around it appears Linux Mint might be OK for my needs. And much more than that I am sure.

    I would like a stable version of something that will suit my needs for a reasonable length of time. I’m 65 so around 20 years would be good. Kidding…well, not entirely. Computers are not my hobby or anything like that. Got plenty to keep me busy. Just want to get out from under MS, Google, etc., and all they do.

    Got a new CPU, came with Windows10, that pushed me over the edge. Want nothing to do with that. If I have to switch to something completely different might as well switch to Linux instead. Thinking about it for some time anyway. Probably should have a long time ago.

    Still going to use an older machine, came with Windows7 on it. Does way more than I need it to, as an example of my needs. None of the features on Windows10 are of any use to me. Especially the slower than he** feature.

    The latest Mint do alright for me? Something else I might check? Not after all the bang bang features. Not even sure of near half what y’all are talking about. Security and privacy are part of what I’m after though.

    .

    1. For someone comming from Windows Linux Mint might be the best option.
      You can load it into a USB drive and see how it works before installing.

  72. Why give absolute access to root, leading to boot failure? sometimes x-session fails and default-session never starts. Of course Timeshift comes to rescue! There should be a way out.

  73. I like linux. I have a question with all this update! When will we be able to connect with garmin. On my computer i”m dual boot with Widows 10 and the only reason of Windows 10 is my GPS update. I have install linux on several computer and everyone like it.

    1. Linux Mint can’t help with that – the GPS manufacturers don’t provide any option for non-Windows users.
      The fact that their actual GPS devices run Linux but can only be updated via a Windows client is the reason I stopped using my (portable) GPS and I now just use my phone for navigating.

    1. Hi dd,

      We’re currently looking at end of May for the BETA, end of June (we’re planning an extended period of BETA testing for this one) for the Stable release and all three editions being released together. This could change of course. At the moment we’re in QA.

    1. Been using it for more than a month now, uninstalling/installing apps like crazy and it still takes 14 GB on system partition! Unbelieveable. One of most stable systems out there. Love the whole KISS, “out-of-the-box” and “set-it-and-forget-it” approach. Software Manager apps can be a bit outdated, but if you really need the latest version of something, I recommend PPAs or flatpak. Linuy Mint Team, keep up the great work, you have nailed the formula!

    2. By the way I’d like to suggest Bleachbit to everyone. Mine was approaching to 17 GB, and I discovered and installed Bleachbit (for those who may not know: Ccleaner of Linux, shortly). Now it is only 7-8 GB, without unnecessary language files etc.. Especially at first usage, it saves a huge amount of space.

      I also would like to say (to Mint Team) it would be useful if it was included out of the box in the installation iso.

    1. Not too sure what this has to do with the Cinnamon DE since it has nothing to do with Gnome-shell. Unless it has to do with garbage collection? Perhaps I don’t fully understand.

    2. It has to do with mozjs and the Javascript interpreter (gjs in GNOME and cjs in Cinnamon). Although the issues aren’t exactly the same, we’re looking into point 2 and considering partial ports. There’s also a WIP on rebasing cjs, but that’s for cjs 4.0.

      In regards to the intel driver, it’s modesetting by default.

  74. I would like to know if Mint 19 will have the capability of my using “scan” on my printer. I cannot with Linus 18. Also will it have more options for printers – brands that will work with it. I am not at all savvy on computers just the basics so please excuse me for my ignorance on these issues.

  75. Sorry but i don’t expect this 19 Linux Mint Editions. I”ll stick with my ones. 18.3 Mate and Kde on my Acer notebook. I always go to give my hit to Mint on Distrowatch every night. It takes me to the LM site and i back home. Linux Mint 18.3 is a fantastic edition for all flavours. Best.

    1. Why not?
      LTS based Mint releases always were great.
      And the benefits of the (much) newer Kernel alone, should be amazing…
      I can’t wait to make the switch!…

  76. Hey, I keep coming twice a day to get an update. Please give us the BETA before the end of this month, as you promised, (finger-crossed)

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