14 DAY TRIAL // The Cinnamon developers have detailed some of the changes that will arrive in the upcoming 2.4 release of their desktop environment, and that includes a few improvements that have already been unveiled.
Cinnamon is the default desktop environment in Linux Mint and it's built by the same developers who are making the Linux distro. It stands to reason that the best implementation for Cinnamon will be on Linux Mint. It's also the place that integrates the latest updates for Cinnamon as soon as they are made available.
Usually, the latest iterations of Cinnamon are integrated quickly in Mint, but the developers are also working on an updated Linux Mint version, 17.1. The new Cinnamon 2.4 DE might arrive there by default and not in Linux Mint 17.
What's new in Cinnamon 2.4
The developers have teased some modifications to the themes and it looks like they are finally coming with the 2.4 release. The biggest improvements will be the addition of a few new default themes, which are basically a few alternatives for the default green one that is already available, and a new selection mechanism.
This will make the process of getting new themes much easier, although it was a pretty simple task before the changes. The leader of the Linux Mint and Cinnamon projects, Clement Lefebvre, has shared a few images from the selection menu. "Among the many UI improvements planned for Cinnamon 2.4 is a new graphical way to select themes."
Users will be able to change the themes with just a few clicks, but the blog post made by Clement Lefebvre is also aimed at theme makers and contains instructions on how the themes must look and what the devs have to do to get them working properly in Linux Mint.
"Icon themes will simply need to have a 'folder' icon. Most themes do so they should work out of the box here and be properly rendered in the new UI. If your theme provides places in multiple colors, make sure to give each color a theme and name them by suffixing the same prefix (for instance MyTheme, MyTheme-Blue, MyTheme-Red..etc). This will allow users to switch the color of individual directories in Nemo and Caja," also says Clement Lefebvre.
Users and developers will also find some important info about Cursor themes, Metacity themes, GTK themes, and of course, Cinnamon themes. There is no release date for Cinnamon 2.4, but it will probably be ready in the near future.
