Cinnamon

Cinnamon is a traditional and modern desktop environment: traditional desktop metaphor as Gnome 2, LXDE or Xfce, with very good graphical and functional features. Forked from Gnome Shell and developed for Linux Mint, it is provided for Gentoo as a Gnome package for  and  platforms.

Without systemd
Cinnamon works great without systemd. For that, eselect a profile without Gnome, as this one: default/linux/amd64/13.0/desktop (platform and version can be different). To get system profiles list:

Then to set the system profile with it's complete name:

Or with profile number according to profiles list:

Also, follow the Gentoo Without Systemd wiki page instructions.

With systemd
For Cinnamon with systemd, eselect either the default/linux/amd64/13.0/desktop/gnome/systemd profile for system-wide systemd, or default/linux/amd64/13.0/desktop/gnome for Gnome systemd dependencies. The platform and version can be different.

Installing
Of course, Xorg must be first installed for Cinnamon to work.

For Cinnamon and other applications to be translated to a specific language, if this was not done during Gentoo install, add the appropriate language to the :

Cinnamon will need two others packages in order to work: and.

Installing:

Two USEflags,  and , are needed by Cinnamon dependencies. Accept emerge temporary file creation or modification –provided by   parameter–, rename it as proposed then run again the installation command.

Services
Xorg server and Cinnamon need the dbus and consolekit services, add them at boot time:

Running these services before restart:

NetworkManager is not needed because network is configured during Gentoo install, and should not run concurently with another network service. Optionaly, to replace a network service named net.eth0 by NetworkManager:

Sudo
For an ordinary user to reboot or shutdown, sudo</tt> is needed with some settings. First install :

Next modify sudo</tt> configuration with the visudo</tt> command:

Visudo runs the default text editor with sudoers file, add for a named user:

Or for the wheel</tt> group users:

Polkit Rules and Actions
For an ordinary user to perform root only actions, policy kit actions must be configured. Get the list of these actions with pkaction</tt>, their names are quite self-explanatory:

The simpler way is to authorize all actions by only testing wheel</tt> group membership. Put a javascript file in, named for example :

To authorize an user belonging to wheel</tt> group to perform only some actions, their names must be indicated. To only suspend, hibernate, shutdown and restart from Cinnamon make a file:

All needed actions can be added to change color profiles, use Nemo (Cinnamon files manager) as root, mount and eject medias, 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</tt> icon set in :

Then make a cache for it:

The new icons set can be selected in Cinnamon Control Center. Mint-X</tt> icons are green, there are others colors which can be installed too, like Mint-X-Grey</tt> or Mint-X-Orange</tt>. 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</tt> version, get it with:

GTK+ version < 3.13.3
System basis color. Get white text 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.

GTK+ version >= 3.13.3
User basis color. Adwaita is now included to GTK+ as default 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</tt> theme, obviously… Mint-X themes are on GitHub, 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 beeing changed.

Debugging
If problems launch Xorg server via ssh</tt> to get live error messages. More messages with  parameter for cinnamon-session</tt>:

Alternatively have a look at.

If Cinnamon can't launch, deleting in home directory is not enough, other Cinnamon or Gnome items must be deleted too before X restart, in directories,  and. can be entirely deleted.

Installing common applications
Some usual Gnome, or not Gnome applications install.

Terminal
requires no dependencies, needs systemd,  should install all Mate desktop environment,  requires some dependencies but is better featured than lxde-base/lxterminal</tt>.

Without systemd
Emerge <tt>xfce4-terminal</tt>:

Or <tt>lxterminal</tt>:

With systemd
Emerge <tt>gnome-terminal</tt>:

Others
For example calculator, screen copy utility, pictures and PDF display, system monitor, archive manager…

External Resources
Polkit see polkit Reference Manual and polkit page.

Web color syntax see Wikipedia article.