I have a new System76 Lemur Ultra Thin (lemu4) notebook PC with Ubuntu 12.04.1 64 bit Long Term Service and Linux kernel 3.3.6-030300 along with Mozilla Firefox Aurora 17.0a2 and Cinnamon 1.4 stable. I have been playing around with different desktop environments in the past few months and I have just settled upon Cinnamon 1.4 stable. Why? It is hyper fast and super stable! It is not Ubuntu Unity! I can easily read the fonts without causing eye strain. It resembles Microsoft Windows and KDE with the GNOME elements. It is in active development and future improved versions are being released on a timely basis. It is actively supported within the Linux Mint community. Ubuntu users can download and install a Cinnamon PPA and get the Cinnamon goodness for free. It supports GTK3 which is important for certain third-party, closed source, proprietary software applications that I installed like Adobe Air and Zinio Reader 4. Finally, it just works (TM)!
I have been ignoring Cinnamon 1.4 stable for quite some time, but I decided to give it a go tonight because I got fed up with the quirks associated with GNOME 3.4.1. I value clear and concise organization for my software applications and I like how Cinnamon retains the original GNOME 2.x layout while incorporating some of the better aspects of GNOME 3.x, KDE, and Microsoft Windows. It is very thoughtfully well put together. It is designed for modern digital work flows for desktop users. There are no fancy effects that are frivolous and obviously designed for a touch centric input devices such as smart phones, tablets, and e-book readers to add confusion, complexity, and degraded PC performance. It is light on system resources and it is extremely fast on modern PCs. It is also super stable as I have yet to encounter any serious bugs that disrupt my digital work flow. It gets out of the way just enough to let me focus on my work without being too bland or boring. Cinnamon adds the right blend of spice to the desktop without overpowering any particular elements. It is very well balanced and thoroughly useful.
Cinnamon 1.6 is in preview now, but I decided to add the Cinnamon Nightly PPA. I plan to see what the fuss is all about after upgrading, logging out, and logging back in.
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