A brand new version of the Cinnamon desktop is about to be released, and chances are you want can’t wait to install it on Ubuntu.
The good news is that you can install Cinnamon 3.2 on Ubuntu, both LTS and the most recent release, quite easily.
The bad news is that you can (currently) only get it from a testing PPA.
We’ll show you how to install or upgrade Cinnamon in a second, but first, let’s take a brief look at what you’ll get if you choose to upgrade:
What’s New in Cinnamon 3.2?
This latest stable update of arguably the most popular desktop environment that isn’t Unity, GNOME Shell or KDE Plasma, packs a modest set of improvements:
- Support for vertical panels
- Support for audible notifications
- Improved keyboard apple
- Menu animation settings
- Improved workspace switcher
- ‘Simplified’ wallpaper manager
- “Peek at desktop” feature
- Applet layout tweaks
- Various bug fixes
Worth upgrading for? If you think so…
Install Cinnamon 3.2 on Ubuntu
As of right-this-cherry-picking-second Cinnamon 3.2 is not available to install on Ubuntu through the usual PPAs.
To install Cinnamon 3.2 on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS or Ubuntu 16.10 right this cherry-lickin’ moment you’ll need to pick one of the following options:
a. Be patient and wait for it to arrive in a stable PPA;
b. Compile it from source yourself;
c. Use the following Nightly Builds PPA, which may be unstable
Whichever route you follow you should be aware that you do so at your own risk.
Cinnamon Nightly PPA
Packages installed from the following Cinnamon nightly PPA come with no warranties or guarantees, and are intended for debugging and testing purposes — keep this in mind!
Caution thrown, open a new Terminal window (Ctrl + Alt + T) and enter the following commands carefully.
The first command will add the stable Cinnamon PPA, while the second will fetch and install the various Cinnamon desktop packages:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gwendal-lebihan-dev/cinnamon-nightly
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt install cinnamon
Once Cinnamon has downloaded all of its packages and dependencies it will unpack and install them.
When done you should log out. At the Unity Greeter select the Cinnamon session from the session picker, like so:
To remove the PPA and uninstall/revert Cinnamon run:
sudo ppa-purge ppa:gwendal-lebihan-dev/cinnamon-nightly