Cinnamon is a desktop environment for GNU/Linux-based operating systems, initially developed by the Linux Mint project as a fork of GNOME Shell.
After 7 months of development the launch of the new version of the popular desktop environment "Cinnamon 5.8", version in which a large number of changes were made, including support improvements, implementation of features, among other things.
This new release of Cinnamon will be offered in the next version of the Linux Mint 21.2 distribution, which is scheduled for release at the end of June.
Main new features of Cinnamon 5.8
In this new version of Cinnamon 5.8, a lots of changes and improvements made since the previous release and now new configurations were integrated of which stand out for example to change the mouse pointer after completing the action Alt+Tab, to change the middle mouse button behavior, which is used by default to paste from the clipboard, as well as dark settings common to all apps, allowing you to select three options: prefer light, prefer dark, and the mode selects the app.
Another novelty that stands out from this new release is that work with themes has been reorganized and the structure of themes has been simplified. For example, brown and sand colors were unified, support for colored stripes in pictograms, where symbolic pictograms may be involved, was removed.
In addition to that, we can also find that added the concept of styles that offer three color modes for interface elements: mixed (dark menus and controls with a light overall window background), dark and light. For each mode, you can choose your own color variant. Style and color options allow you to get popular interface templates without having to select separate skins.
We can also find that the file manager uses new two-tone icons and multi-threaded thumbnail generation is enabled, plus what the cability to control windows and virtual desktops using on-screen gestures, as well as the use of gestures to tile and control the playback of multimedia content. Gestures are supported on touch screens and touch panels.
On the other hand, we can find that added implementation of Freedesktop portals, which are used to organize access to the resources of the user's environment from isolated applications, also the program interface for installing applications has been redesigned, the algorithms for sorting and grouping applications have been improved.
Of the other changes that stand out:
- Changed UI in Pix imager, moved to gThumb 3.12.2 codebase
- Instead of a classic toolbar and menu, there are buttons and a dropdown in the header.
- Added support for AVIF/HEIF and JXL formats. Added support for color profiles.
- Added settings to return the original menu size and resize based on zoom factor.
- The login screen provides support for switching between multiple keyboard layouts.
- Improved keyboard navigation.
- The ability to customize the layout on the on-screen keyboard has been implemented.
- Added the ability to use the Switcheroo VGA subsystem to switch between different GPUs on laptops with hybrid graphics.
- Changed the layout of the tooltip.
- Increased padding between applets in the panel.
- Notifications use symbolic colors and icons that are used to highlight active items (accent).
- The touchegg package is used to define gestures.
- Added setting to disable low battery warning on connected external devices.
- Background effects redesigned and included.
- Added an item to the displayed context menu for applets to call the menu editor.
Finally, if you are interested in knowing more about it, you can consult the details In the following link.
How to install Cinnamon 5.8 on Linux?
For those who are interested in being able to install this new version of the desktop environment, You can do it for now by downloading the source code of this and compiling from your system.
In the case of Arch Linux the package can be installed by typing the following command:
sudo pacman -S cinnamon-desktop
In the case of Ubuntu and derivatives, there is currently no third-party repository that has the complete update, at the moment just this, is the one that has already begun to introduce the updated packages and it is a matter of hours before it will be available for download and installation.
To add this repository to the system, we must open a terminal (you can use the shortcut key Ctrl + Alt + T) and in it you will type the following command:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:trebelnik-stefina/cinnamon
sudo apt update
Once the environment is available, you can install it by typing:
sudo apt install cinnamon-desktop
In the event that the new version most likely reaches the official channels first, the environment can be installed simply from a terminal by typing the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository universe
sudo apt install cinnamon-desktop-environment
While for Fedora, only the package is available at the moment, in the same way it does not take long to be available.
To install the package as soon as it is available, just type:
sudo dnf install cinnamon
If you are interested in knowing more about this new version, you can consult the details In the following link.