The first Cinnamon version was released back in December and until March, the GNOME Shell fork used by default in Linux Mint 13 (Cinnamon edition) has seen many new versions, but there have not been any new releases since then. In case you were wondering, the development continues and the next Cinnamon version should come with some very cool improvements.
For instance, the latest Cinnamon from GIT has already got some interesting new features:
- Cinnamon 2D - a new session that can be used on computers without the graphics hardware or drivers to run the full Cinnamon session. Cinnamon 2D doesn't use any effects but other than that, it looks just like the full Cinnamon session. Until Cinnamon 2D, the GNOME 3 classic/fallback session was used as fallback.
- Workspace OSD / workspace names: the workspace name can now be configured and also, the workspace name is displayed when switching workspaces (this can be configured from the Cinnamon settings; however, this feature didn't work in my test)
- Keyboard navigation in Scale: close windows with CTRL+W or mouse middle-click
- Configurable panel height
Here are some screenshots with these new features:
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| Cinnamon 2D session - looks the same as the full Cinnamon session |
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| Changing the panel height in Cinnamon from GIT |
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| Assigning names for each workspace |
But that's not all, more new features are expected in the next Cinnamon release:
- In Cinnamon Settings, add the ability to install / delete themes, extensions and applets. Also add the ability to preview themes
- Tiling features (fill, grid..etc).
- Fallback on Metacity when Cinnamon crashes
- more
It's not yet known when a new Cinnamon version will be released, but it should be pretty soon. If you can't wait, you can grab the latest Cinnamon from GIT via GitHub or if you use Ubuntu or Linux Mint, use the Cinnamon Nightly PPA.
