How to install cinnamon de on arch linux

Cinnamon

Cinnamon is a desktop environment which combines a traditional desktop layout with modern graphical effects. The underlying technology was forked from the GNOME desktop. As of version 2.0, Cinnamon is a complete desktop environment and not merely a frontend for GNOME like GNOME Shell and Unity.

Contents

Installation

Cinnamon can be installed with the package cinnamon .

Cinnamon applications

Cinnamon introduces X-Apps which are based on GNOME Core Applications but are changed to work across Cinnamon, MATE and XFCE; they have the traditional user interface (UI).

Application	GNOME	Cinnamon
Text editor	Gedit/Pluma	xed
Image viewer	Eye of GNOME	xviewer AUR
Document viewer	Evince/Atril	xreader
Media player	Totem	xplayer AUR
Image organizer	gThumb	pix AUR

Fallback mode

On the event when Cinnamon crashes, its Fallback mode activates. To control opened windows in this mode you need to install metacity package and gnome-shell to have a taskbar.

Starting

Graphical log-in

Choose Cinnamon or Cinnamon (Software Rendering) from the menu in a display manager of choice. Cinnamon is the 3D accelerated version, which should normally be used. If you experience problems with your video driver (e.g. artifacts or crashing), try the Cinnamon (Software Rendering) session, which disables 3D acceleration.

Starting Cinnamon manually

If you prefer to start Cinnamon manually from the console, add the following line to Xinitrc:

If the Cinnamon (Software Rendering) session is required, use cinnamon-session-cinnamon2d instead of cinnamon-session .

Restarting Cinnamon

From a command line, execute the following line:

Configuration

Cinnamon is quite easy to configure — most common settings can be configured graphically. Its usability can be expanded with applets and extensions, and also it supports theming.

Cinnamon settings

cinnamon-settings launches a settings module specified on the command line. Without (correct) arguments, it launches System Settings. For example, to start the panel settings:

To list all available modules:

Printers For configure printers, install the system-config-printer package. Networking To add support for the networking module, enable Network Manager. In order for NetworkManager to store Wi-Fi passwords, you will need to also install GNOME Keyring. Bluetooth For Bluetooth device support, install the blueberry package. If Blueberry is unable to enable or disable Bluetooth, add yourself (and/or any relevant users) to the «rfkill» user group. See Users and groups#Group management for more information.

Applets and extensions

While an applet is an addition to the Cinnamon panel, an extension can fully change the Cinnamon experience. They can be installed from the AUR, (package search), or from inside Cinnamon (Get more online):

Alternatively, install manually from Cinnamon spices.

Pressing power buttons suspend the system

This is the default behaviour. To change the setting open the cinnamon-settings panel and click on the «Power Management» option. Change the «When the power button is pressed» option to your desired behaviour.

Manage languages used in Cinnamon

• To add/remove languages: see Locale.
• To change between enabled languages: install the mintlocaleAUR package.
• For Cinnamon to correctly display another language: install the cinnamon-translations package.
• To change the keyboard layout: navigate to System Settings > Hardware > Keyboard > Layouts.

Use a different window manager

Cinnamon does not support using a different window manager.

Tips and tricks

Creating custom applets

The official tutorial on creating a Cinnamon applet can be found here.

Default desktop background wallpaper path

When you add a wallpaper from a custom path in Cinnamon Settings, Cinnamon copies it to

/.cinnamon/backgrounds . Thus, with every change of your wallpaper you would have to add your updated wallpaper again from the settings menu or copy / symlink it manually to

Additionally the official mint wallpapers are available for every release. Checkout the AUR.

Show home, filesystem desktop icons

By default Cinnamon starts with desktop icons enabled but with no desktop icons on screen. To show desktop icons for the home folder, the filesystem, the trash, mounted volumes and network servers open Cinnamon settings and click on desktop. Enable the checkboxes of the icons you want to see on screen.

Menu editor

The Menu applet supports launching custom commands. Right click on the applet, click on Configure. and then Open the menu editor. Select a sub-menu (or create a new one) and select New Item. Set Name, Command and Comment. Check the launch in terminal checkbox if needed. Leave unchecked for graphical applications. Click OK and close the menu editor afterwards. The launcher is added to the menu.

Workspaces

A workspace pager can be added to the panel. Right click the panel and choose the option Add applets to the panel. Add the Workspace switch applet to the panel. To change its position right click on the panel and change the Panel edit mode on/off switch to on. Click and drag the switcher to the desired position and turn the panel edit mode off when finished.

By default there are 2 workspaces. To add more, hit Control+Alt+Up to show all workspaces. Then click on the plus sign button on the right of the screen to add more workspaces.

Alternatively, you can choose the number by command-line:

Replacing 4 with the number of workspaces you want.

Hide desktop icons

The desktop icons rendering feature is enabled in Nemo by default. To disable this feature, change the setting with the following command:

Themes, icons and backgrounds

Linux Mint styled themes, icons and backgrounds can be installed with the mint-themes AUR , mint-x-icons AUR , mint-y-icons AUR and mint-backgrounds AUR packages. Whereby the latter is a collection of all backgrounds included in all Linux Mint Versions. Backgrounds of individual Linux Mint versions are also available over the AUR.

The themes and icons can be edited in Settings → Themes . The backgrounds in Settings → Backgrounds .

Official Linux Mint Cinnamon themes are also included in the mint-themes AUR package.

Setting the desktop theme via shell can be done like this:

Sound events

Cinnamon does not come with sounds used for events like the startup of the desktop that are also used in Linux Mint by default. These sound effects can be installed with the cinnamon-sound-effects AUR and mint-sounds AUR packages. The sound events can be edited in Settings → Sound → Sound Effects .

Resize windows by mouse

To resize windows with Alt+Right click , use gsettings :

Portable keybindings

To export your keyboard shortcut keys, you should do:

To later import it (for example) on another computer, do:

Screenshot

As explained in Taking a screenshot, installing gnome-screenshot will add this functionality. The default shortcut key is Prt Sc key. This binding can be changed in the applet Menu > Preferences > Keyboard under Shortcuts > System > Screenshots and Recording. The default save directory is $HOME/Pictures , but can be customized with eg.

Prevent Cinnamon from overriding xrandr/xinput configuration

The cinnamon-settings-daemon provides a number of plugins which can manage the display, keyboard and mouse. These plugins will override user set configuration (such as xrandr commands in the xinitrc file). To stop user set configuration from being overridden, it is necessary to prevent the settings daemon plugins from being started.

This can be done by copying the .desktop entry for the relevant settings daemon plugin (these will be located in /etc/xdg/autostart/ ) to $HOME/.config/autostart . Then append the line Hidden=true to each copied entry.

To preserve display, keyboard and mouse settings, consider disabling the following:

Troubleshooting

Debugging

You can use the cinnamon-looking-glass tool (Melange — Cinnamon Debugger) to inspect various things about the Cinnamon environment:

• a list of currently-open windows
• a list of currently-loaded extensions (applets, desklets, etc.)
• logs

The «logs» feature is especially useful if you are encountering crashes (often happening due to extensions no being compatible or buggy).

cinnamon-settings: No module named Image

If cinnamon-settings does not start with the message that it cannot find a certain module, e.g. the Image module, it is likely that it uses outdated compiled files which refer to no longer existing file locations. In this case remove all *.pyc files in /usr/lib/cinnamon-settings and its sub-folders. See the upstream bug report.

Starting cinnamon from tty after crash

If Cinnamon is completely unresponsive it can be restarted from the tty (Alt+F2) with the following line:

Video tearing

Because muffin is based upon mutter , video tearing fixes for GNOME should also work in Cinnamon. See GNOME/Troubleshooting#Tear-free video with Intel HD Graphics for more information.

Disable the NetworkManager applet

Even if you do not use NetworkManager and remove the Network Manager applet from the default panel, Cinnamon will still load nm-applet and display it in the system tray. You cannot uninstall the package, because it is required by cinnamon and cinnamon-control-center , but you can still easily disable it. To do so copy the autostart file from /etc/xdg/autostart/nm-applet.desktop to

/.config/autostart/nm-applet.desktop . Open it with your favorite text editor and add at the end X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=false .

Alternatively you can disable it by creating the following symlink:

The ability to blacklist particular icons from the system tray (such as the nm-applet icon) has been requested upstream.

Cinnamon overrides settings in xorg.conf

Cinnamon overrides custom settings in xorg.conf like display orientation and layout.

Open System Settings > Startup Applications and set Cinnamon Settings Daemon — xrandr to OFF.

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esa1975 / Cinnamon Desktop Environment on Arch Linux.md

Cinnamon Desktop Environment on Arch Linux

Installation and Configuration

Written by Eric Adams on August 22, 2019

Install the Cinnamon desktop environment on a vanilla Arch Linux base and configure the desktop, installing themes and additional software.

Step 1 — Download Arch Linux ISO

Download a copy of the Arch Linux installation ISO from their download page.

Step 2 — Install Arch Linux

Either write the ISO image to a USB thumb drive for bare-metal install or create a virtual machine.

• I recommend using balenaEtcher as I have had issues with other USB creators.
• For virtual machines I use Oracle VM VirtualBox.

I am using the installation helper script Archfi (Arch Linux Fast Installer) which has an ncurses interface to make it easier to manage the installation process yet results in a completely stock vanilla Arch Linux installation. Archfi installs the base system and then enables you to use archdi (Arch Linux Desktop Install) which is an additional helper script from the same author.

Either boot the PC using the USB drive or create a new virtual machine and attach the ISO to boot into the Arch Linux installation environment.

Download the Archfi script using the following command:

Start the installation process by issuing the following command:

Complete the steps presented by Archfi to install Arch Linux. You can optionally follow along with my video which covers the particulars of using Archfi.

Step 3 — Install Cinnamon DE with archdi

Once Archfi has completed the base installation it will offer the option to continue with archdi. I will use this to install the Cinnamon Desktop Environment and various other software needed for a full desktop experience, such as Xorg, fonts and so on.

1. Complete the steps presented by archdi to install Cinnamon. You can optionally follow along with my video to see the specifics of how I install it.

Step 4 — Boot and Configure New System

You should now have a fully functioning system with Cinnamon. There are some steps we can take to improve the experience as the Cinnamon installation has no additional software installed by default, including utilities like an image viewer and text editor. The default themes are also lacking so you’ll likely want to install some others. A good option is the Arc theme combined with the Papyrus icon theme. I prefer the Mint Themes and have created a guide for installing them here.

lightdm-gtk-greeter was installed as part of the archdi setup. It’s fine but not particularly attractive. A better option is the lightdm-slick-greeter which is available in the AUR. You will also want lightdm-settings which is also available in the AUR.

Find the section under [Seat*] and uncomment the line below, adjusting the text as noted.

Save and exit. You will see the change on next login/reboot. From here you can use the Login Manager Settings program to adjust the properties of the login screen.

Linux Mint, the creators of Cinnamon, include several «Xapps» as a part of the Linux Mint distribution. These are available on Arch Linux as a combination of native and AUR packages. You are also free to use whichever programs you prefer. I personally think some of the GNOME apps are more refined and capable so I tend to use a mixture. In any case, most GTK+ apps are going to integrate perfectly with Cinnamon so the choice is yours. These are merely my suggestions.

• Text Editor — xed is the Linux Mint Xapp but it’s very basic and lacks many features when compared to something like the gedit, the GNOME text editor. You may also prefer something more capable for writing code such as Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code or Sublime Text. I usually have a basic text editor and a more advanced one installed for times when I need to do something more complicated.
• Image Viewer — Xviewer is the Linux Mint Xapp and works well enough. Another good option is Pix which is more akin to something like Gwenview. You can also use EyeOfGnome.
• Video Player — Xplayer is the Linux Mint Xapp and is available in the AUR however it doesn’t seem to be working for me at this point and time. GNOME MPV is an excellent player as is VLC.
• Music Player — Rhythmbox is an excellent, full-featured music player.
• Web Browser — There isn’t one by default so it’s your choice. I recommend Firefox for better privacy and security.
• Nemo Plugins — Nemo is the Cinnamon file manager. It supports plugins to extend functionality. A few worth installing are:
  • nemo-fileroller — support compressed file formats (zip, tar, gz)
  • nemo-preview — press the spacebar to view a preview of the selected file
  • nemo-terminal — embed a terminal panel that follows the directory as you navigate the file system. Use F4 to toggle.

This guide gets you most of the way there in terms of creating a full desktop experience with Cinnamon on Arch. There are still many more things you will likely want to do such as configure printing and other services based on your needs. The General Recommendations page on the Arch Wiki provides a good list of things you may want to set up.

I hope you found this helpful. If you have any questions or comments feel free to reach out to me on Twitter or Mastodon. Thanks for reading and enjoy your new system!

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