Recently second version candidate released for installer of the next major release of Debian, "Bullseye", Besides that Debian's Cinnamon maintainer disclosed that they have made the decision to no longer continue their work, since it has switched to KDE.
On the part of the installer, it is mentioned that currently in the second release candidate there are still 155 critical crash bugs versions (a month ago there were 185, two months ago about 240, four months ago 472 and at the time of the freeze in Debian 10 316.
At the same time, the date of the complete freeze of the Debian 11 package "Bullseye" base was announced, immediately before launch. On July 17, the transfer of any changes to packages will be blocked and will require permission from the team responsible for launch training, as the launch is expected to arrive in a matter of weeks.
Of the key changes in the installer compared to the first release candidate:
- In the cdebconf (Debian Configuration Management System) configurator, the information message format and the action log have been improved.
- Fixed freezing issues when switching to a shell in crash recovery mode or selecting some interface languages.
- The list of mirrors has been updated.
- The brltty and espeakup packages for the visually impaired have been added to all images, including images for installation over the network.
- The Linux kernel has been updated to version 5.10.0-7.
- Provided the ability to force the setup mode level setting under conditions of a small amount of memory on the system (lowmem = + 0). Updated lowmem levels for arm64, armhf, mipsel, mips64el and ppc64el architectures.
- Udev-udeb provides the configuration for the / dev / fd and / dev std {in, out, err} symbolic links.
- Added mdio module for Ethernet controller of Raspberry Pi 4 boards.
Finally, from the case of Norbert Preining (the Cinnamon maintainer on Debian) announced the withdrawal of its authority to create packages with new versions of Cinnamon Desktop for Debian due to the fact that he stopped using Cinnamon on his system and switched to KDE. Since Norbert no longer uses Cinnamon all the time, he cannot provide packet quality testing under real world conditions.
In a moment, Norbert switched from GNOME 3 to Cinnamon due to usability issues for advanced users in GNOME3. For a time, Norbert was happy with the conservative interface combination Cinnamon with modern GNOME technologies, but experiments with KDE showed that the environment was better suited to their needs.
Since my switch to KDE / Plasma, I haven't used Cinnamon in months. I only occasionally tried new releases, but never tried them in the real world.
Having left Gnome3 for its complete lack of usability for professional users, I escaped to Cinnamon and found a good home there for quite some time, using modern technology but keeping changes to the user interface conservatively.
For a long time I have not even contemplated using KDE, having been burned during the bad days of KDE 3,4 when bloating as can be was the best description.
Norbert characterizes KDE Plasma as a lighter environment, fast, more responsive and customizable. You have already started creating new KDE builds for Debian, prepared on the OBS service, and you intend to upload KDE Plasma 5.22 packages to the Debian Unstable branch soon.
Norbert has expressed his willingness, on a surplus basis, to continue to maintain the existing Cinnamon 4.x packages for Debian 11 "Bullseye", but does not intend to package Cinnamon 5 or do any major Cinnamon-related work.
To continue with the development of Cinnamon packages for Debian, new maintainers have already been found: Joshua Peisach, the author of Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix and Fabio Fantoni, who is involved in the development of Cinnamon, who are together to provide quality support for Cinnamon.
Source: https://www.preining.info