The latest version of the user-friendly shell will be the centrepiece of Linux Mint 17.1, [the first point release in the distro’s new LTS approach][1], due later this month.
### New In Cinnamon 2.4 ###
Cinnamon 2.4 comes with a raft of welcome features, improvements and overall polish, such as reduced memory usage, new ‘Privacy’ and ‘Notifications’ settings and desktop wallpaper slideshows.
The [official release notes][2] highlight some of the bigger changes, including:
- Cinnamon desktop starts with “zoom” animation
- 30 memory leaks fixed as part of code review
-‘Super+e’ shortcut opens ‘Home’ folder
- Desktop font can now be customised
- Timeout in ‘Logout dialog’ has been removed
-‘Theme and Background’ settings redesigned
- Background slideshow support (plus new panel applet controller)
-‘Notification and Privacy’ settings pane added
Some say Nemo is the best file manager for Linux
The Nemo file manager also benefits from the following improvements:
- Redesigned toolbar
-‘nemo-emblems‘ extension supports adding emblems to folders
- Sidebar hover highlight effects
-‘Smarter dynamic bookmark section’ in sidebar
- Folder colours can be quickly configured using nemo-folder-color-switcher (not yet released)
### Upgrade to or Install Cinnamon 2.4 in Ubuntu ###
If **you favour stability you should not upgrade to Cinnamon 2.4 in Ubuntu** yet. New releases of Cinnamon arrive a month before Linux Mint for the specific purpose of testing, ironing out bugs and gathering feedback.
But if the above sounds more like a reason to try rather than avoid, Cinnamon 2.4 can be installed in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 14.10 using the following Cinnamon nightly PPA:
Already have Cinnamon installed? I’d advise running the following command in lieu of the one above. This will ensure that any package conflicts are automatically resolved by the package manager:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Installed and want shot? That’s easy enough; you can remove Cinnamon 2.4 and the bulk of its configuration files, dependencies and cruft by running this command:
sudo apt-get purge cinnamon
**If you try it out, let us know what you make of the changes in the comments below — and be sure to share a screenshot or two, too! **
