Fixing the unbroken
For many months now I have been using Linux Mint 13 MATE edition.
While I had no major complaints about MATE, there were a few features of Cinnamon I thought I might like. I decided to change.
I backed up my /home partition just in case, and then installed Linux Mint 13 Cinnamon, formatting the root partition but leaving the /home partition as it was. All went smoothly.
I played around with Cinnamon for a couple of days and decided that yes, my decision to switch was a good one, apart from the fact that the system seemed to be a bit slower.
Being a bit of an experimenter, I decided to update Cinnamon to the Nightly version to see what lay in the future. This was a mistake. I immediately ran into problems with my ATI video and some of the minor features of Cinnamon failed to work, such as the ability to customise it.
For a couple more days, I worked with my new setup but the more I worked with it, the slower it seemed to become. It reached the stage where the disadvantages heavily outweighed the advantages and I decided to cut my losses and return to MATE.
Once again, I took the lazy way out and left my /home partition alone while reinstalling Linux Min 13 MATE.
Very soon I was back to where I started with my original setup and configuration. I reinstalled all my applications and all went well.
The problem now was that I missed the features of Cinnamon. I decided in a fit of madness to install Cinnamon Desktop on top of MATE, so at least I would have a choice if I got too frustrated with one desktop or the other.
To my surprise, Cinnamon works very well on top of MATE. Naturally, all the settings from my previous install of Cinnamon were intact so it worked straight away just as I wanted it. It appears to be a lot faster that the standalone Cinnamon version, and I have been using it all this week with no problems whatsoever.
A major bonus that resulted from all this messing around is my new choice of Desktops –
I not only have a choice of MATE or Cinnamon, I also can run Gnome Classic, or even Ubuntu. As a bonus, I can run XBMC as my desktop. This is my preferred Media Platform which I installed as a programme.
I am very happy with this setup. It is running very smoothly and the only thing I can’t do is upgrade Cinnamon to the Nightly version. That was a hard lesson.
“If it ain’t broke then don’t fix it”?
Rubbish!
Heh, well gee whiz, I wonder who talked you into trying Cinnamon again? By the way, I found out why the Cinnamon nightly builds won’t run properly on a new installation of Maya/Cinnamon, it’s missing a dependency (which has been reported at Github->Mint/Cinnamon).
Attempting to start “cinnamon-settings” called out an error that “lxml.xtree” (sp?) was missing. The solution was to install “python.lxml”. After installation the nightly builds worked fine. The only reason I can figure that my original install of Maya/Cinnamon didn’t have this problem with the nightly builds was that “python.lxml” was already installed as a dependency of one of the third party applications I run like Google Earth or Skype, both of which load a ton of dependencies.
The second paragraph should actually read:
“Attempting to start “cinnamon-settings” from the terminal called out an error that “lxml.xtree” (sp?) was missing
Damn! That leaves me with a major problem.
Do I risk switching to the Nightlies again?
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention just how I found this out. I downloaded a a new .iso of Maya/Cinnamon and installed it into one of my test partitions. My initial reason was to check if MDM still disappears after a couple of seconds (on boot/reboot) if the Nvidia video driver is installed–it still does. But not in Maya/MATE. But this is another problem that doesn’t affect you.
Once I finished working on the above problem I added the Cinnamon nightly PPA and updated and guess what happened? Same problem as you encountered–no Cinnamon Settings. That’s when I attempted to start “cinnamon-settings” via the terminal, got the call out I mentioned previously, researched the problem and installed “python.lxml”. Problem solved. So, insltall “python.lxml”, add the nightly PPA and update. after update, restart Cinnamon or log off and log back on and everything should be fine.
On the off chance that everything ain’t fine, simply go into “Software Sources” and remove the Cinnamon nightly PPAs then open Synaptic and search for “muffin” and remove all installed “muffin” packages. The search for “cinnamon” and remove do the same (should only be one package). Log out and and log back under “Gnome Classic”. Open Synaptic again, hit the “Reload” button and then search for “cinnamon” and install (it should install the needed “muffin” packages as well). Once finished, log back out, choose “Cinnamon” and log back in again and you’re back to the original Cinnamon “shell” (1.4).
But you shouldn’t have to revert. Installing “python.lxml” solved the nightly problem very nicely.
Lot’s of typos in the last comment but I’m sure you can figure out what I’m saying?
Typos I can cope with!
I took the plunge and added the Nightly PPA. I did the refresh and it informed me that Cinnamon and Muffin were both to be updated. It then added (a little apologetically, I thought) that it would need to install “python.lxml” as well. Do the Cinnamon developers read this blog?! 😉
All running very smoothly now, and thanks for the hand-hold.