Cinnamon

Cinnamon is a contemporary desktop environment with a traditional interface that Gnome 2, LXDE or Xfce users will find easy to work with. Cinnamon has very good graphical and functional features. Forked from Gnome Shell and developed for Linux Mint it is available for the and  architectures.

Prerequisites
Cinnamon works great under OpenRC without systemd. To install no systemd dependencies, eselect a profile without Gnome: default/linux/amd64/13.0/desktop. To install Gnome systemd dependencies only, eselect default/linux/amd64/13.0/desktop/gnome. The architecture and version can be different in both cases.

To get system profiles list type:

OpenRC
Then to set a system profile using its complete name:

Or with the associated profile number according to profiles list above:

Also, follow the instructions available in the Gentoo Without Systemd article.

Systemd
For Cinnamon with systemd support select the GNOME desktop profile ending in systemd:

Xorg
Of course for Cinnamon to work properly Xorg must be first installed. Be sure is working properly before proceeding with this article. If needed, test Xorg as detailed in Using startx chapter of Xorg Gentoo guide.

For Cinnamon and other applications to be translated to a specific language (Linguas), if this was not done during the initial Gentoo installation, add the appropriate language value to the LINGUAS variable in :

Cinnamon will need two other packages: and. Install them now:

Two USE flags,  and , are needed by Cinnamon dependencies. Accept a temporary  or  file creation or modification (provided by   parameter), rename it as proposed then re-run the installation command.

Emerge
Finally, after performing all the steps above, ask Portage to emerge Cinnamon:

OpenRC
Xorg server and Cinnamon need the and  services. Add them to start at system boot time:

Start the services without restarting the system:

NetworkManager is a Cinnamon dependency and is not needed if network was configured during the initial Gentoo installation. It should not run concurrently with another network service. If NetworkManager is desired be sure to disable other network management programs or services before starting it. For example, if the system was originally configured to use Gentoo's netifrc scripts to manage the network connections, disable any network services:

After removing other network services, add NetworkManager:

Systemd
With systemd use as detailed in systemd page.

Sudo
For an ordinary user to reboot or shutdown from Cinnamon, is needed with some settings. First install :

Next modify configuration with the  command:

Visudo runs the default text editor with file, replace   in the text below with the username of each Cinnamon user:

Or for the wheel group users:

Polkit rules and actions
For an ordinary user to perform root only actions from Cinnamon policy kit actions must be set. Use to get a list of actions, the names are self-explanatory:

The simplest way is to authorize all actions by only testing wheel group membership. Put a JavaScript file in, named for example :

To only authorize some actions, their names must be indicated. For a wheel group user to suspend, hibernate, shutdown and restart make a file:

All needed actions can be added to change color profiles, use Nemo (Cinnamon files manager) as root, mount and eject media, set screen backlight, use network manager, change wallpaper, etc. Several  blocks can be used.

Starting Cinnamon
When not using a login/display manager, make a file in the user's home directory:

Then to start Xorg and Cinnamon, once logged in:

With a display manager follow their wiki pages instructions.

Mint-X icons
By default Cinnamon comes with Gnome icons. Mint-X icons are on GitHub. Download, unzip, and put the Mint-X icon set in :

Then make a cache for it:

The new icons set can be selected in Cinnamon Control Center. Mint-X icons are green, there are others colors which can be installed too, like Mint-X-Grey or Mint-X-Orange. Also make a cache for them.

Desktop icons text color
Icon's text color in Cinnamon desktop is black by default, not always readable. This color is differently modified according to GTK+ 3 version, get it with:

< 3.13.3
System basis color. Change text color by adding CSS rules in, after  line (Adwaita is the default theme coming with GTK+):

The 2nd rule concerns selected desktop icon and can be modified to get others background color or transparency.

>= 3.13.3
User basis color. Adwaita is now included to GTK+ as the theme replacing Raleigh, rules must be set in users home directories:, without  line. Aditionally in this example left Nemo side bar is grey colored:

Mint-X themes
Cinnamon comes with cinnamon theme, obviously… The Mint-X themes are available for download on GitHub. Download them, unzip, and copy to if needed. They can be selected in Cinnamon Control Center.

Playing with themes
Almost all theme settings can be changed in file in a theme directory. Example with Cinnamon theme, which is not in but in : first copy theme's directory to an user themes sub-directory, named for example, which will be new theme name:

Edit, changes can be viewed by selecting another theme then reselecting the theme being changed.

Terminals

 * - Requires no dependencies.
 * - Requires some dependencies but is better featured than.
 * Requires systemd.

OpenRC
Emerge the Xfce4 terminal program:

Or the lxterminal:

Systemd
When using Systemd emerge the GNOME terminal:

Other
For example calculator, screen copy utility , pictures and PDF  display, system monitor , archive manager , disk burning , text editor.

Troubleshooting
If problems launch Cinnamon via to get Xorg live error messages. More messages with  parameter for :

Alternatively have a look at.

If Cinnamon cannot launch, deleting in home directory is not enough, other Cinnamon or Gnome items must be deleted too before X restarts. These can be found in directories, and. can be entirely deleted.

External resources

 * Polkit see polkit Reference Manual and polkit page.
 * Web color syntax see Wikipedia article.
 * A Gnome applications list.
 * Cinnamon announcements.