Hello again,
Precise Pangolin
Those who will try Ubuntu 12.04 & have a multitouch touchpad will notice the new feature (when enabled)!
Some not very apparent new features (relative to 10.04 & not 11.04 or 11.10!) are:
- Installation time (i.e; start of copying files to notification or required reboot): 6~7 minutes.
- Properties of an image in the image viewer gives you the folder name the image is located in & the ability (which I like) to open this folder by clicking the name.
- Two-finger scrolling: In the “Mouse and Touchpad” settings, under Touchpad I enabled horizontal scrolling (which I do not understand why it is not enabled by default) & chose “Two-finger scrolling” instead of “Edge scrolling”. The latter was not comfortable in my case; I sometimes couldn’t lock the scroll & use it, but with the two-finger option (which needs some time to get used to) is much better; I can now use two fingers anywhere on the pad to scroll not just verticall or horizontally but in any direction (i.e; both vertical & horizontal).
Cinnamon
I’d also like share with you the relatively new desktop graphical user interface (GUI): Cinnamon. Below are two images of the desktop, which unlike Gnome 2 which has two panels, has only one main panel.
Cinnamon might very well appeal to Gnome 2 users who do not wish to switch to neither Gnome 3 that Fedora employs nor Ubuntu’s new Unity.
A particular feature employed in Cinnamon that adds to Gnome 2 that I really appreciate is a graphical feature. What I really like is the Mac-like drop-down window when saving a file. All I can show you is the screenshots below:
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| The default GUI for Mint 12 with its default one-panel look. |
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Cinnamon panel settings
It is very easy to edit the panel settings &/or add a new panel.
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If you like what you see & would like to try it out, you can install it on Precise Pangolin (12.04 LTS) as follows (read note below first):
- add the stable Cinnamon repository: deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/gwendal-lebihan-dev/cinnamon-stable/ubuntu precise main
- Install with:
apt-get update
apt-get install cinnamon - Launch Cinnamon: Log out, select Cinnamon from the log in menu & Log in.
- Enjoy 😀
Note: Keep in mind that Cinnamon is a newly born project & so it is under active development & you might possibly face bugs (but keep in mind ithat it has already the default for Mint 12). It deserves to be tried; Note that the above ppa is the “stable” repository.
Personally, I guess It is going to be second after Unity, though I am also testing LXDE, XFCE, fluxbox, openbox,…
Update (2012-06-05): For more about Cinnamon, check the article “Cinnamon 1.4” by Tim Schürmann and Kristian Kißling from Linux Magazine.
If you really enjoyed Cinnamon, I highly suggest that instead of installing Ubuntu & Cinnamon that you install the Ubuntu-based Linux Mint (or its other alternative, the Debian-based Linux Mint Debian Edition -LMDE).
Thanks for reading 🙂
Ibrahim El Merehbi 