Partner links

Install the latest and greatest Cinnamon desktop on Ubuntu 12.04

Ubuntu 12.04 Cinnamon Office Apps

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, code-named Precise Pangolin, is the latest release of the popular Linux distribution. It was made available for the public just a few hours ago. While the distribution itself is very popular, the Unity desktop, the graphical interface that we all see, is not necessarily as popular.

And that is because it is not very user-friendly. It has a tendency to get in your way more than it is supposed to. Actually a good desktop environment, like any piece of well-coded software, is supposed to stay out of your way completely. Because we are dealing with free software where things are not bolted to the deck, there are other options for those not satisfied with the Unity desktop.

One of the better alternatives to Unity that has been made available is the Cinnamon desktop, a project of Linux Mint, a desktop distribution based on Ubuntu Desktop itself. This article show the simple steps needed to install and use Cinnamon on Ubuntu 12.04. Installation is via a PPA (Personal Package Archive) by Gwendal Le Bihan. To begin the process of installing Cinnamon, simply add the PPA to your system’s software sources by typing the following command:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gwendal-lebihan-dev/cinnamon-stable
The step is shown in the image below. The system will complain about this being a package for Ubuntu 11.10, but it was updated about two weeks ago and has so far worked without a hitch on my 32-bit system.
Install Cinnamon PPA Ubuntu 12.04

After adding the PPA, update the package database by typing sudo apt-get update , then install Cinnamon by typing sudo apt-get install cinnamon . After installation has completed, logout. Your login screen’s session menu should now show the entries shown in the image below. Select Cinnamon and log in.
Ubuntu 12.04 Session Menu

Your desktop should now look just like this.
Ubuntu 12.04 Cinnamon Desktop

And this. Personally, I find Cinnamon to be a lot better than Unity and MATE.
Ubuntu 12.04 Cinnamon Office Apps

Share:

Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
LinkedIn

Partner links

Newsletter: Subscribe for updates

Subscribe
Notify of
guest
50 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
wintoosa8
wintoosa8
10 years ago

Even Windows 8 Tile UI is better than Unity – Unity is terrible. Catastrophic failure from canonical.

Leo
Leo
Reply to  wintoosa8
10 years ago

i’m using Windows 8 / Linux Mint 15 cinnamon dualboot

Mint.! its beautiful and fast..

Chris
Chris
11 years ago

I’ve just installed Ubuntu 12.10 today and immediately followed your nice clear instructions to get Cinnamon. Gnome Classic works fine – so I’ve already got a big improvement over Unity! If I choose Cinnamon at login I’m left with a blank screen. I saw an error message at some point about not finding a file – either /usr/bin/Xorg or /usr/bin/cinnamon. Sorry I can’t remember exactly, I’ve done a lot of fiddling about to try to fix it.

Chris
Chris
Reply to  Chris
11 years ago

I’ve now abandoned Cinnamon and am using Ubuntu 12.10 with Gnome Classic. I’ve tried both Cinnamon and MATE a few times, but never got them to work properly. I’m fairly sure the problems are with configuration files for window managers/desktop managers. Since most Linux users will have tried a few distributions I think the installation process needs refinement to delete/update previous configuration files.

Leo
Leo
Reply to  Chris
10 years ago

Hi, i’m using Linux Mint 15 Cinnamon.!! its awsome.!!

JGJavaDev
JGJavaDev
11 years ago

I am new to linux GUI’s and coming from windows 7 and osx I find Unity very intuitive and simple to use. I have always disliked the “start menu” paradigm as I find it to be cumbersome and unattractive. Mint to me looks like a very stylized XP. I will install it and see if there is some novel functionality but its appearance at first blush I do not find compelling.

fu
fu
11 years ago

i followed your instruction but im still forced to unity.

should i disable or uninstall something first before i could activate this one?

Pujols
Pujols
11 years ago

thank you

Phil T
Phil T
11 years ago

Cheers for this.
Personally, I feel that Canonical have taken a wrong turn with Unity. Having used LinuxMint on a couple of my machines I love Cinnamon – Canonical should too 😉

Burhan KILINC
11 years ago

Because I could not move unity taskbar to bottom, I installed cinnamon and liked it. I guess I will use it for a long time. In the meantime Unity may improve, but I don’t like to change my working environment so often. Right now, cinnamon works for me.

Nili
11 years ago

Me too followed the method and installed okay without a problem, Really nice and clean desktop. Thank you so much!

Tim
Tim
11 years ago

If I wanted Windows 7, I’d install Windows 7.

raj
raj
Reply to  Tim
11 years ago

Then go ahead use that — what r u doing here ?! May I ask this question here ? Sorry dnt feel bad.

ubuntu-is-bloated
ubuntu-is-bloated
Reply to  Tim
11 years ago

You’re a lucky guy !! I dont like windows but they have top performance.

On ubuntu 12.04 i have the 30% of the 3d game performance i had on previous versions !
I must test other window managers.

Joe Cool
Joe Cool
11 years ago

I run Ubuntu 12.04 in a VM. I followed the instructions exactly and I ended up with what I had before except for:

1. A bar at the bottom that shows the four virtual desktops and a button where I can click to minimize all windows.
2. Now when I hit the Windows key, nothing happens. It used to bring the handy application launcher.

🙁

Egor
Egor
Reply to  Joe Cool
11 years ago

It’s impossible to use Cinnamon under VM. Should be fixed in next version. What you see is the fallback mode.

aurisonea
aurisonea
11 years ago

Thanks for tutorial, great job, is working 100%

praful
praful
Reply to  aurisonea
11 years ago

sorry to say this but it doesn’t work for me.
i tried same repository to install desktop but bad luck.

Richard
Richard
Reply to  finid
11 years ago

I had to add ppa:gwendal-lebihan-dev/cinnamon-stable first. can add it via synaptic if you prefer that method.

Drmzindec
Drmzindec
11 years ago

Thanks, i have alwyas liked cinnamon more than unity.

Bom
Bom
11 years ago

Hi, thanks for the manual. I like to try different GUIs, but I still have come to love unity in 12.04.

foobantu
foobantu
11 years ago

Hi,

Thanks a lot !!

I followed the method and now Cinnamon is installed and working fine.

Thank you very much.

Get the latest

On social media

Security distros

Hacker
Linux distros for hacking and pentesting

Crypto mining OS

Bitcoin
Distros for mining bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

Crypto hardware

MSI GeForce GTX 1070
Installing Nvidia GTX 1070 GPU drivers on Ubuntu

Disk guide

LVM
Beginner's guide to disks & disk partitions in Linux

Bash guide

Bash shell terminal
How to set the PATH variable in Bash
Categories
Archives
50
0
Hya, what do you think? Please comment.x
()
x