Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix

The polls are officially in.

Ubuntu Cinnamon will be made, using Cinnamon 4.0.

There will be lots of new features, but we will get to that soon.

And I won’t turn the flavor section into a whole Ubuntu Cinnamon thing-I will make a wix website which I will announce.

https://join.slack.com/t/ubuntucinnamon/shared_invite/enQtNTUxNzIyNDU5MTcwLWM3NWQxODMwM2ZjMzkwZjUwMTAyMWY4MjFkMDU1NDU1NDA2MjU4ZDU1NzYyZmI1YTg2NDAzNDQzODVlODExMGY . That is the slack invitation link to help or something, or read about it.

Alright, that tops it-any questions or stuff, just ask.

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Excellent! Good luck!

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chanath, you’ve helped me a lot, and I am glad that you gave me questions and stuff to think about. I will see you around the forms, and I will follow your ideas and stuff.

Anyways, got to get a test build out right now, trying to install Disco-Cinnamon.

Also, what is the process you used in order to get Disco-Cinnamon? I tried using xdeb and it didnt really work, using the cmds you did-I didn’t get to the first one working.

Also, I am more of an apt guy. I don’t think I need synaptic but if I need let me know.

So, what are the instructions? (You could try uploading the .list file you showed me on a pastebin or something)

Actually, I should say this publicly and not just to chanath:

So he showed me how to do the Disco-Cinnamon, but I realized thats just upgrading Linux Mint to Ubuntu 19.04. It makes Linux Mint a “version spin” where its just build on a stable release.

I tried taking the tessa package into the 19.04 test build and there was no RELEASE file, blocking it. It leaves to the conclusion that I probably need to download 18.04.2, download the repository to be able to get Cinnamon 4.0 and upgrade to 19.04.

Cinnamon is interconnected with Mint packages, and Mint packages are interconnected with Synaptic. Mint doesn’t interfere with the base packages from upstream (Ubuntu), but Cinnamon 4.0 is for the moment is made to work with Ubuntu 18.04.1. Now, that Ubuntu 18.04.2 is released they’d test that on it to see, if their packages won’t break. If there’s something wrong (by Ubuntu’s base update), they’d correct it and release Tessa 19.2 in a month or so.

Quite naturally, they are keeping an eye on Disco packages, but won’t talk about it and/or release any solutions yet. They’d do the same with upcoming Ubuntu 19.10. In about a month or so, after the release of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, they’d release the next Linux MInt LTS. By that time, there might be Cinnamon 5.0 or 6.0, and whatever they’d have would work quite well with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS base.

Upgrading 18.04 base all the way to disco is easy, but installing Cinnamon 4.0 packages in Ubuntu disco is not that easy – lot of dependencies not available in Ubuntu repos, even though they are upstream. You have to get them from different places. It is quite a bit time consuming work. Not worth the time lost. Much easier to move the whole thing to disco. Any future changes to Cinnamon would come through quite easily.

Actually, the people who like Cinnamon won’t come here. They’d just install the latest Linux Mint. It is not like the Arch, Gentoo, Fedora users creating the latest Cinnamon for their platform.

That is a shame. My wife uses Mint because it is a lot more stable and more like the Windows system she used to use. When we travel I only bring my laptop (which runs Ubuntu). I installed Cinnamon on top of Ubuntu so she has a familiar environment when she borrows the laptop to check her E-Mail or take notes about our trip. Unfortunately, it seems the version of Cinnamon in the Ubuntu repository hardly ever (IF ever) gets updates after the initial version. Her laptop is running Mint Tessa with the latest and greatest Cinnamon whereas I still have Cinnamon 3.8.9

Yeah, just tried it. I can only get Cinnamon 3.8.9 so Linux Mint would have to give me instructions for Cinnamon 4.0.

This is the approach I took to initially create “budgie-remix” which went on to form Ubuntu Budgie.

Can I kindly suggest that you start with just the packages in the disco repos. Once you have the basic look and feel sketched out, then you can start to think about taking things one stage further - looking to build a cinnamon v4 remix.

So start with a standard ubuntu ISO. Layer on the cinnamon packages, a theme. Look at overrides you can do with cinnamon to make the look and feel.

Next take a mini ISO - probably from 18.10 initially until 19.04 version is available. Upgrade to 19.04. Then repeat the layering process about.

Think about investigating and practising creating an ISO from the above.

Only then should you think about cinnamon v4. With that you will need to investigate packaging and building - taking the upstream sources, compiling and building into a PPA.

Best stay away from trying to mix Mint built packages with Ubuntu packages. They have been built from different versions and different toolsets. Remember you are attempting to create a remix then a flavour. Just installing random packages from different vendors is creating a hybrid - that isn’t a firm foundation to build upon.

Virtual machines & snapshots are a god-send for all of this. Rolling back things in a VM is much faster than trying to-do stuff on real hardware. You’ll need a good machine with lots of disk space and lots of memory!

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Can you go into a bit more detail? Like all the steps you did so I get an idea

I had a look back at my old blog that described how budgie remix was born…

Followed by

Other articles showed how the distro grew and changed.

So as I mentioned start with a standard iso. Write down or script the stuff you have to do to change it into cinnamon. I.e. what packages needed to be installed, what stuff needed to be tweaked at a low level such as dconf stuff or other configuration files.

Once you have got a rough idea of the basic structure of a cinnamon install then have a go with a clean install on a minimal iso install. This really is basic so you can the understand what extra packages you need beyond the standard cinnamon packages. E.g. lightdm, greeter, xorg graphics , network manager, pulseaudio and other stuff that comes by default with ubuntu but you may not have realised.

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The Slack invite expired

Yeah I forgot-I deleted slack, we use Telegram

t.me/ubuntucinnamon

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Does that need revealing our phone no ?

There is an option to disable showing it to others.

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Bit hard to trust an “organisation” that runs from an undemocratic country. :wink:

Keep politics out of this forum please! You should know better @chanath!

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Out of idle curiosity, what would be the reason someone would consider an “Ubuntu Cinnamon” distro over just running Linux Mint? I’m sure I’m not the only one who’ll ask…

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I know VK since 2006, Mail .ru too. I know the people of that country, and the that city, where VK originated. Anyone, who was born in that city is loyal to that city and the country. It is that simple.

It was just an opinion.

Let’s stay respectful. I’m sure he didn’t want to steer of into this course.