From the ‘Would You Like a Mint with your Fedora’ files:
The upcoming Fedora 17 Beefy Miracle release is likely to be one of the most feature packed Fedora Linux releases in years.
One feature that I’d like to see in it, is the Cinnamon desktop.
Cinnamon was started by Linux Mint and has since found its’ way to multiple distro’s repositories. As far as I can tell, it hasn’t quite yet landed in anything official for Fedora (and yes I know, it’s all open source so users can just go and build on their own – great tutorials are out for that too). Cinnamon is a response to user demands for something other than Unity or GNOME Shell on top of a GNOME 3 base.
There are lots of people (myself included) that don’t want to use Shell or Unity, but still would prefer to have a GNOME base rather than migrate to KDE, Xfce or otherwise. That’s where Cinnamon fits in.
Currently there is a bugzilla entry to get Cinnamon included with Fedora.
“Cinnamon provides core user interface functions for the GNOME 3 desktop, like switching to windows and launching applications,” Leigh Scott wrote in the bugzilla entry. “Cinnamon takes advantage of the capabilities of modern graphics hardware and introduces innovative user interface concepts to provide a visually attractive and easy to use experience. The desktop layout is similar to Gnome 2.”
Scott entered the bug on January 2nd. To date, no one in the project has ‘officially’ claimed the bug and it’s not clear if anyone is actually reviewing the packages.
I expect that to change in the days/weeks ahead. From a Fedora perspective there is no reason not to include Cinnamon in its repos, for users to grab. More importantly it gives those that don’t want to use the Shell a real choice. In Fedora 17, the plan is to not have GNOME fallback mode for users (which is actually how I run Fedora 16 now). Meaning users that run GNOME by default will get the Shell.
That said, the current release plan for Fedora 17 calls for the inclusion of GNOME 3.4 which is still in active development. Given that Cinnamon likely has some interesting GNOME dependencies, I’d also wager that the introduction of GNOME 3.4 could also throw a few technical hurdles at the Cinnamon inclusion.
In any event, there is still time for a member of the Fedora community to review and take on Cinnamon – if you have the time (and Fedora bugzilla credentials) – please review bug 771252.
Everyone that likes GNOME (but detests Shell and Unity) Thanks You!
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.