Linux Mint 22 “Wilma” it was himreleased a few weeks ago and without a doubt one of the most anticipated attractions of the launch was the latest version of its desktop environment «Cinnamon 6.2» with all the improvements that were prepared for Wayland, as well as for the different components of the environment.
So, if you are looking for a good, beautiful and efficient desktop environment, Cinnamon 6.2 is one of the perfect solutions for you and also, if you combine the environment together with the applications offered in the Flathub catalog, you can save or, failing that, make it easier for a newbie to whom you are recommended Linux to save a large amount of time and headaches with dependency problems.
Among the different benefits Of what is offered by using the Flatpak packages together with Cinnamon, we can highlight the following:
- Integration: For the first time, the latest version of Cinnamon 6.2 greatly improved the integration of Flatpak with the desktop, both in appearance and functionality. This includes integration with desktop themes, shortcuts, application menus and widgets, plus in the case of Linux Mint 22 “Wilma” Unverified applications are no longer displayed in Software Manager.
- Vast catalogue: Although this is not exclusive to Cinnamon, as many will know, Flathub has a wide variety of applications, which makes Flatpak an excellent option and offers a solution to the compatibility problems of some applications.
- Easy updates: Flatpak handles updates efficiently, allowing you to always have the most recent versions of the applications, in addition to allowing you to update a single application with the flatpak package_name command or update all the Flatpak apps that you have installed on your system with flatpak update.
- Application isolation: Thanks to Flatpak's sandboxing approach, applications are isolated from the rest of the system. This means that if any application has a problem, it is less likely to affect the overall performance of both Cinnamon and the system as a whole.
Installing Cinnamon 6.2 from PPA on Ubuntu and derivatives
Before moving on to the execution of commands, I must say that I know that some will come to say that why not choose to recommend installing Linux Mint, and that I prefer to recommend the separate installation. The reason is simple and is that there are better derivatives of Ubuntu that do not come loaded with so many unnecessary applications and/or configuration, as well as that there are other distros for which Cinnamon fits well and an example of this is Arch Linux and its derivatives. .
In the case of this article, I have installed Cinnamon 6.2 on Voyager Linux (basically a Xubuntu done right). To install the environment I have relied on a repository which has the Cinnamon 6.2.9 version marked as experimental, but to be honest the desktop works quite well and has not given me any problems. Where I had a lot of problems was when I compiled Cinnamon 6.2 from source code and it gave me so many errors that I decided to look for a repository that had the environment already pre-compiled.
Now for those interested in being able to install the most recent version ofe Cinnamon 6.2 without having to resort to installing Linux Mint, you should know that this version has already begun to be distributed in the Third party PPA repositories And among those I found there is one that worked for me. To add this repository there are two options and this depends on the version of Ubuntu you have or on which the derivative you use is built.
In my case I am using the most recent version of Voyager and what is built on Ubuntu 24.04. That is why, if you are using this version Ubuntu or your distro is on this version or about Ubuntu version 22.04, what you should do is To avoid complicating things, look in the applications menu and open "Software and Updates".
A window like this will open and In the "other software" tab you are going to click, add and in the new window that opens you are going to place the following:
deb https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/trebelnik-stefina/cinnamon/ubuntu jammy main
Once added Click where it says "add source" and you are going to refresh the repositories. You can do this from terminal by typing:
sudo apt update
What we are doing here is forcing the system to use the package built for "Ubuntu 22.04" (in the case of using Ubuntu 24.04 or some derivative).
While in case you are using a version prior to 22.04. You can add the PPA from terminal with the following command:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:trebelnik-stefina/cinnamon
Once the repository is added, just refresh, do an update and an upgrade (in case you have packages to update).
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
After that we are going to install Cinnamon 6.2 con the following command:
sudo apt install cinnamon
When you finish downloading and installing the environment with all its dependencies, it is best to restart your computer. Although you can access the environment without rebooting and simply close your current user session and choose Cinnamon.
Once you have started your session with Cinnamon You can check the environment version from terminal by typing:
cinnamon --version
Installing Flatpak applications
With the environment installed, now we are going to move on to the topic of FlatHub, which if you are unaware, I can tell you that this is the distribution platform for Linux applications in Flatpak format and that it is currently included in many Linux distributions.
If you doubt that you have Flatpak and FlatHub support enabled, just type:
sudo apt install flatpak
flatpak remote-add –if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
Installed FlatHub apps
Now with the environment and FlatHub in our system, the time has come to install some of the best applications that FlatHub offers us. You can consult the entire catalog of apps from its official website at this link.
Web browsers
On FlatHub you find a large number of applications and within the vast catalog of this, we can find a large number of popular applications, of which the main web browsers cannot be left behind.
Among the browser recommendations to install are:
Firefox (which its package is verified) and can be installed by typing the following command:
flatpak install flathub org.mozilla.firefox
Brave, is another recommendation and is also a verified package:
flatpak install flathub com.brave.Browser
Chrome, the Google web browser, which despite not having verification is still an option to take into account if you do not want to be dealing with repositories or dependency problems that may arise:
flatpak install flathub com.google.Chrome
Messaging Apps
Other utilities offered within the Flathub catalog to take into account are messaging applications. These can usually be used when making a desktop-phone link from a web browser, but the simple fact of having to depend on one to be able to use the messaging app already makes it another dependency.
Telegram, one of the most popular and widely used messaging applications, thanks to the great versatility it can offer with integrations with other apps or automation tools. You can install this app by typing:
flatpak install flathub org.telegram.desktop
tangram, As such, it is not a messaging app, but it is designed to allow the user to organize and run their web applications, that is, we can classify it as a container that allows having multiple apps. The interesting thing about Tangrama is that it allows you to use your messaging apps, all in one space. That is, Telegram, Whatsapp, Messenger, Mastodon, among many others. You can install this by typing:
flatpak install flathub re.sonny.Tangram
Discord, It is another of the messaging apps that could not be missing, this is the official all-in-one messaging, voice and video client that is available for Linux. You can install it by typing:
flatpak install flathub com.discordapp.Discord
Finally, in this section and which I personally believe has already gained a space and a large community of users, it is Delta CatPersonally, I can describe this messaging application as a type of Whatsapp but for some reason it reminds me a lot of MSN Messenger. Its installation can be done by typing:
flatpak install flathub chat.delta.desktop
Applications to cool your desktop
Without a doubt, one of the parts that cannot be missing are the apps that will help us give a better presentation to our desktop and one of the most essential is Hydra Paper, an app which will be extremely useful if you have two or more monitors, since it will help us establish different desktop backgrounds on each one or, failing that, use and scale a single background for all monitors. In addition to this, it also allows you to place funds randomly, among other things. You can install it by typing:
flatpak install flathub org.gabmus.hydrapaper
Another application that can work in conjunction with HydraPaper is Wallpaper Downloader And as its name indicates, this app will help you download wallpapers from a list of the most popular sites that offer desktop wallpapers. You can install it by typing:
flatpak install flathub es.estoes.wallpaperDownloader
On the other hand, there are those who do not like images and prefer to place videos as their desktop background, and for this we have Hidamari which is a simple but effective application that will allow us to do this. We can carry out the installation by typing:
flatpak install flathub io.github.jeffshee.Hidamari
Recommended apps
Finally, I would like to recommend some additional applications that I am almost sure will be useful to the vast majority of you in your daily life.
The first of them and what I consider essential is Flatseal and this app will basically allow us to view and manage the permissions of the Flatpak applications. We can install it by typing:
flatpak install flathub com.github.tchx84.Flatseal
KeePassXC is another of those essential applications that you cannot miss since this powerful password manager is extremely useful in every way:
flatpak install flathub org.keepassxc.KeePassXC
And finally we have guiscrcpy, which is a screen mirroring app that will allow us to view the screen of our Android device on our desktop and be able to work with it. We can carry out the installation by typing:
flatpak install flathub in.srev.guiscrcpy