Cinnamon and GNOME-Shell

[Adunaic]

I had a bit of a google and could not quite find the answer.

I have had a look at cinnamon again, and whilst I do not think it suits my work flow I was curious about a few things.

I understand it is called a fork of GNOME-Shell sometimes, is this true? or did they just re-write it?

Are cinnamon applets the same as gnome-extentions? Can they be interchanged (or could they once before code bases diverged?)

Am I correct in thinking that cinnamon do not use mutter and use compiz instead?

Is there only common feature now GNOME3 (i.e web, shotwell etc) or is it just Gtk?

Also, what do we call them? Are Cinnamon and GNOME-Shell "User Interfaces" (that is what wiki calls them) and thus Cinnamon+GNOME3 or GNOME-Shell+GNOME3 are Desktop Environments?

Originally Posted by Adunaic

I had a bit of a google and could not quite find the answer.

I have had a look at cinnamon again, and whilst I do not think it suits my work flow I was curious about a few things.

I understand it is called a fork of GNOME-Shell sometimes, is this true? or did they just re-write it?

Are cinnamon applets the same as gnome-extentions? Can they be interchanged (or could they once before code bases diverged?)

Am I correct in thinking that cinnamon do not use mutter and use compiz instead?

Is there only common feature now GNOME3 (i.e web, shotwell etc) or is it just Gtk?

Also, what do we call them? Are Cinnamon and GNOME-Shell "User Interfaces" (that is what wiki calls them) and thus Cinnamon+GNOME3 or GNOME-Shell+GNOME3 are Desktop Environments?

I understand it is called a fork of GNOME-Shell sometimes, is this true? or did they just re-write it?

It's a fork (was the same code) of gnome-shell, cinnamon also has alacarte and something similar to gnome-tweak-tool incorporated.

Are cinnamon applets the same as gnome-extentions? Can they be interchanged (or could they once before code bases diverged?)

No

Am I correct in thinking that cinnamon do not use mutter and use compiz instead?

No we use muffin a fork of mutter.


Gnome-shell and cinnamon are both window managers ( compiz was also a window manager).

[Adunaic]

Originally Posted by Yellowman

It's a fork (was the same code) of gnome-shell, cinnamon also has alacarte and something similar to gnome-tweak-tool incorporated.



No




No we use muffin a fork of mutter.


Gnome-shell and cinnamon are both window managers ( compiz was also a window manager).

I was hoping you would reply. Cheers, it cleared a few things up. One last question, if they are window managers, what are muffin and mutter?

Originally Posted by Adunaic

I was hoping you would reply. Cheers, it cleared a few things up. One last question, if they are window managers, what are muffin and mutter?

There are window and compositing managers

Description : Muffin is a window and compositing manager that displays and
: manages your desktop via OpenGL. Muffin combines a sophisticated
: display engine using the Clutter toolkit with solid
: window-management logic inherited from the Metacity window
: manager.
:
: While Muffin can be used stand-alone, it is primarily intended to
: be used as the display core of a larger system such as Cinnamon.
: For this reason, Muffin is very extensible via plugins, which
: are used both to add fancy visual effects and to rework the window
: management behaviors to meet the needs of the environment.

[Gareth Jones]

I don't know about Cinnamon specifics, but just to try to clarify some of the terminology etc.

Muffin and Mutter, like Metacity, Compiz and KWin, are responsible for window management and compositing, as Yellowman says.

They draw borders and title bars around windows, and handle sizing and placement on the screen. With compositing, windows each have their own off-screen graphics buffer, and the window manager creates the on-screen image with alpha-blending and shadows etc.

Cinnamon and GNOME Shell are both desktop shells – their primary purpose is starting and switching between applications, much like Bash and similar shells are on a terminal. Neither are responsible for the applications that you run, such as Shotwell that you mention. Modern desktop shells integrate quite tightly with window managers, to the point where they're no longer independently interchangeable as they used to be.

"Desktop environment" is largely an artificial concept, referring to the combination of a tool-kit (framework for writing GUI applications, e.g. GTK+ or Qt), display server (i.e. X, Wayland in the future perhaps), window manager and shell, and core applications (text editor, terminal, file manager etc.). Traditional DEs like GNOME, KDE, Xfce etc. were self-contained projects which offered these things, but GNOME and KDE have both grown bigger than just "core" applications, and Unity and Cinnamon are both alternative window manager/shell combinations that otherwise use the GNOME software stack (by default).