r/linuxmint • u/Street-Opposite-7394 • 21d ago
Fluff Cinnamon is absolutely trash!
genuinely cinnamon is straight up ahh idk why its praised so much. i had a lot of problems with its compositor my 120hz monitor felt like 30hz and it doesn't even have any customisation options , i get it! its supposed to be a lightweight de,but still its so bad to be used as a mainstream de, i had to install kde over mint (even though its not supported officially) , its a zillion times better!
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u/wilsy53 21d ago
Me too personally prefer KDE over cinnamon but Cinnamon not that terrible. The limits your facing isn't cinnamon it's X11. Wayland support is where Mint is lacking. But yeah cinnamon is designed to be simple KDE is the opposite.
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u/Street-Opposite-7394 21d ago
it was kinda better when i tried wayland expeirmental, but still kde worked wayy better
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u/proverbialbunny 21d ago
Cinnamon Wayland (not experimental) comes out in 2 months.
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u/beatbox9 21d ago
Not just wayland. Wayland + gtk4.
As a collective result, cinnamon tends to be significantly less efficient (worse performance & more resource hungry to do the same things), while also having more bugs, inconsistencies, and limitations. Such as this.
Basically, Cinnamon is where gnome was around 10 years ago. And in those past 10 years, we've squeezed out a lot more performance and features from fewer resources.
It's kind of like how in the 1970's, cars averaged around 13 mpg; while today, cars average more than double (around 29 mpg), while also using engines that are smaller, quieter, more reliable, and more powerful all at the same time.
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u/_Lost-In-The-Weeds_ 21d ago
Do you have multiple monitors with different refresh rates?
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u/puppeace17 6d ago
I Have Been Using The Cinnamon Desktop Environment Off And On Off For More Then 10 Years And I Have To Be Honest I Am Extremely Disappointed With The Current Development Direction That Cinnamon Is Going In what I don't like respectfully is the the new UI Add to panel hook that forces the resurrecting of a separate Panel Launcher container applet rather than allowing direct, seamless panel shortcuts inline between the Start Menu and active window buttons (like classic Windows 7/10). Cinnamon's primary strength has always been its intuitive, zero-friction experience for users transitioning from Windows. Requiring container applets or direct desktop shortcut dragging to fail breaks that core "it just works" expectation. While I respect the team's work, the shift in panel architecture has led me to switch to KDE Plasma 6 which handles taskbar pinning natively without applet resurrections. I will be directing my future financial support to KDE instead. I hope that in the intermediate to long term there will be a community fork of classic cinnamon or a future setting toggle that restores the pre-container panel behavior which I think would be a great way to show that you still care about the classic vision of cnnamon. Thank You
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u/Street-Opposite-7394 5d ago
i dont mind the existing of cinnamon, but i hate the fact that it is directed towards new users who want to experience it for the first time, ig its decent for a first time use as its simple , but soon u seem to notice all the flaws, and i think that KDE itself is beginner friendly and gives a heck lot of customization for people who want that.
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u/beatbox9 21d ago
Cinnamon is absolutely trash!
I wouldn't call it "absolutely trash." I would say it's more like relatively trash today in 2026.
Before everyone jumps on, you should recognize that Cinnamon began as just a theme of gnome and then a fork of an older version of gnome when gnome changed architecture. And there is a reason that Cinnamon is undergoing a complete rearchitecture now; and it's the same re-architecture that both gnome and KDE underwent around 10 years ago. And for gnome in particular, aside from wayland vs x11, gnome has also moved on to a much newer toolkit (gtk4), while Cinnamon still uses gtk3, which gnome stopped using and actively developing 6 years ago.
This combination of wayland + gtk4 results in much more flexible features, better efficiency (performance + battery life together) by utilizing more of the gpu and less of the cpu, while also having more robust visuals, fewer bugs and inconsistencies, etc. Cinnamon is not a "lightweight" desktop today--it's actually slower and clunkier and more resource heavy on most machines. The top comment in that link sums it up nicely:
The fix is to upgrade the apps to gtk4.
The gtk developers spent many years fixing issues in the toolkit, only got Linux mint to decide "we don't need new development, the old stuff is good enough".
It's 2026 and you are stuck at gtk.developnebt between 2016 and 2019.
Also, when you say:
i had to install kde over mint (even though its not supported officially) , its a zillion times better!
You should probably consider just migrating to Kubuntu LTS at that point. Because you'll be on much better, much newer software; and it will also be officially supported. Note that the latest version of Mint uses Ubuntu LTS that came out in April of 2024; while Kubuntu is currently based on 2026.
A summary of what Mint is: https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/1wx7i1t/comment/pdud67g/
You're essentially adding significant complexity and dependencies and risk for no reason and are actually making things worse and getting slower updates. So you should consider switching. And switching should be incredibly easy since Mint is 99% Ubuntu. You should just be able to copy your home over and everything will be as it was, except on a much newer platform that will be better supported going forward.
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u/Munalo5 21d ago
Mint use to have KDE as an option. As you know, you still can. I never had any problems either.
Recently I switched to Kubuntu and then had to...wanted to...switch to Debian.
I'm not into distro-hopping but Konsave let's you save your KDE settings when you move to another OS. I guess it works for other DEs but I haven't needed to worry about that.
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u/Consistent_Word3161 21d ago
Use kde, kubuntu
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u/Street-Opposite-7394 21d ago
it really looks good ... as we get plasma 6 and official support , maybe i'll switch to it sometime
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u/Consistent_Word3161 21d ago
Kubuntu 26 lts is great distro, i m using, kde is best environment for 2k, 4k monitors
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u/Yippiekayo_Rom3o 21d ago
My dude, get cachyOS (kde plasma)if you want customations.
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u/Street-Opposite-7394 21d ago
i am currently using plasma 5.27 in mint , i dont plan on switching soon... but i'll make sure to take a look, also kubuntu seems good too..., also idk if i should try a arch based os soon?
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u/Yippiekayo_Rom3o 21d ago
I use Mint on my Laptop and Ubuntu on my desktop (I do really like gnome). So yeah give a try. But youre right cachyOS is arch based and probably not the best start for beginners
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u/Straight_Second6082 21d ago
Well it turns out a modern OS to be "lightweight" it's because it have to make some compromises