Linux Mint Starts Working On Wayland For Cinnamon, Likely Not Fully Ready Until 2026

[Sonadow]

That's great and all, but they didn't explain exactly how they work on their Wayland support. Since Muffin is based on Mutter, I assume it's based on Mutter the Wayland compositor. Since Cinnamon and Muffin are hard forks of Mutter, which receive an upstream rebase every few years, it sounds like it will lag behind upstream Mutter Wayland improvements and new features. Either that, or they'll have to do a lot of downstream work in order to keep up.

Overally I think Cinnamon is a good desktop, but imo its development method is flawed exactly because of the reliance on hard-forking and rebasing every few years, which is very time consuming for an already small team.

Muffin doesn't need to have all the latest features and improvements from Mutter. It just needs to have enough to provide a usable desktop under wayland and pipewire, and that includes, at a bare minimum, the ability to properly share the display in a web meeting, and to allow remote control over the same meeting.

Mutter and Gnome at this stage allow for everything except the last. So if Cinnamon and Muffin were to do their next rebase on Gnome and Mutter in 2024 or 2025, they should be in a decent-enough state.

[Sonadow]

Diversity, choice, freedom, individualism, liberalism.

Uniformity, standardization, bricks in the wall...

Anyway, Mint has a lot of users, must be worth at least something.

Perhaps other people simply have preferences different than yours. You have to allow for other people's preferences. "2-3 distros" is way too little to allow for diversity in preferences.

What's so wrong about Cinnamon and Mint? I guess it's for people who like an easy-to-use traditional-style taskbar and start menu, intended for a casual computer user, and a 2-year upgrade cycle.

Not everyone likes the very experimental concepts of Gnome Shell, in fact, it was heavily critiqued when it was first released.

Preferences and working styles change over time.

The "experimental" concepts in Gnome Shell have already been implemented in OS X and Windows even before Gnome Shell existed. And ChromeOS is all-in on it as well.

[drastic]

Preferences and working styles change over time.

The "experimental" concepts in Gnome Shell have already been implemented in OS X and Windows even before Gnome Shell existed. And ChromeOS is all-in on it as well.

Obviously some people like it, some don't. For those who don't like the Gnome Shell kind-of-interface, there is Linux Mint. Obviously, a significant number of users likes a more traditional interface.

I think that's the main "selling point" of Linux Mint: the desktop is not Gnome Shell.

It can be argued that Gnome-Shell-alike desktops were "forced" on people, by Windows, OS X and Gnome Shell. Consequently, those using the Gnome Shell (Ubuntu) are just sticking by the defaults, and they never experienced any other better alternatives. I have no hard data to support such a view, but some kind of theoretical argument can be made on that basis.

[sophisticles]

2026?

Never going to happen.

If they need 3 years to get Wayland working with Cinnamon, then there is something fundamentally wrong with one, or more likely both, of them.

Here's were we will be in 2026, Nvidia will have released their ARM based PC CPU's and they will have released Nvidia OS, a BSD based OS, built from the ground up for gaming, AI and computer.

Linux will still be a pimple on the ass of computing, with an even smaller user base, and even tinier fan base, and Michael will have to refocus his website of all things Nvidia OS.

[drastic]

2026?
Here's were we will be in 2026, Nvidia will have released their ARM based PC CPU's and they will have released Nvidia OS, a BSD based OS, built from the ground up for gaming, AI and computer.

Linux will still be a pimple on the ass of computing, with an even smaller user base, and even tinier fan base, and Michael will have to redocus his website of all things Nvidia OS.

Yes, probably. If Linux desktop marketshare is around 3% globaly now, perhaps it will be 4% in two years, perhaps not.

But why would Linux desktop users care about that? As long as Linux desktop is working and progressing, I wouldn't care much about the majority of population who don't know better and don't really care about computing.

[Rovano]

2026?

Never going to happen.

If they need 3 years to get Wayland working with Cinnamon, then there is something fundamentally wrong with one, or more likely both, of them.

Maybe it is not curious about the reports of bugs.

Personally, I would rather if instead of cinnamon put their strength in their own distribution with Mate or XFCE de. Their popularity is not only thanks to DE, but also thanks to applications. Cinnamon in principle can never be one of the best de code, but a popularity, for example. And here the other developers/managers could think about why.

[asoltesz]

If Linux desktop marketshare is around 3% globaly now, perhaps it will be 4% in two years, perhaps not.

That 3 percent is more like 7 since you can safely add ChromeOS to it (runs Linux desktop apps + Linux kernel and Wayland based).

This is before we start correcting for adblockers which almost every Linux user uses but few Windows users, so skews the stats. Real-world share may be 10%.

Here's were we will be in 2026, Nvidia will have released their ARM based PC CPU's and they will have released Nvidia OS, a BSD based OS, built from the ground up for gaming, AI and computer.

Muhhaahha. No.

Even if they ever started such a silly thing, their gaming OS would be dead in the water without Steam.

What is more likely is that SteamOS will become a gaming focused, general-availability OS which Nvidia starts contributing to and build devices for.

[RejectModernity]

2026?

Never going to happen.

If they need 3 years to get Wayland working with Cinnamon, then there is something fundamentally wrong with one, or more likely both, of them.

Here's were we will be in 2026, Nvidia will have released their ARM based PC CPU's and they will have released Nvidia OS, a BSD based OS, built from the ground up for gaming, AI and computer.

Linux will still be a pimple on the ass of computing, with an even smaller user base, and even tinier fan base, and Michael will have to redocus his website of all things Nvidia OS.

The least delusional Nvidia fanboy

[Sethox]

2026?

Never going to happen.

If they need 3 years to get Wayland working with Cinnamon, then there is something fundamentally wrong with one, or more likely both, of them.

Here's were we will be in 2026, Nvidia will have released their ARM based PC CPU's and they will have released Nvidia OS, a BSD based OS, built from the ground up for gaming, AI and computer.

Linux will still be a pimple on the ass of computing, with an even smaller user base, and even tinier fan base, and Michael will have to redocus his website of all things Nvidia OS.

I remember a certain CEO in a certain M$ company said that Linux was cancer. And that was a big company back then too in 2001. But here we are having AMD (and Intel) open source drivers and all, and completely won over the Server side of things.

[Danny3]

Diversity, choice, freedom, individualism, liberalism.

Uniformity, standardization, bricks in the wall...

Anyway, Mint has a lot of users, must be worth at least something.

Perhaps other people simply have preferences different than yours. You have to allow for other people's preferences. "2-3 distros" is way too little to allow for diversity in preferences.

What's so wrong about Cinnamon and Mint? I guess it's for people who like an easy-to-use traditional-style taskbar and start menu, intended for a casual computer user, and a 2-year upgrade cycle.

Not everyone likes the very experimental concepts of Gnome Shell, in fact, it was heavily critiqued when it was first released.

I generally agree with what you say, but...
Linux Mint's users seem so be only newbies or people that don't care about privacy, security and quality.

In my opinion, a distro and a desktop environment should try to be as good as possible in many different areas as you cannot know how advanced a users might be, how many users can be on a computer and how many different tasks will they be doing and which will be those.

Linux Mint and Cinnamon is not the only distro and DE that offers an easy-to-use traditional-style taskbar and start menu, so we can put that at the side for a moment.

What about privacy and security, shouldn't most people want that too?

Well in this case it's clear that the maximum of privacy and security level that we know, cannot be achieved without Wayland, so a DE should have Wayland support!

What about a distro / DE being able to fully utilize the hardware available, shouldn't most people want that too?

If a person has a 10-12bit color capable monitor / TV, then the distro / DE should be able to fully use it!

If a person has a Freesync or VRR capable monitor / TV, then the distro / DE should be able to fully use it!

If a person has a HDR capable monitor / TV, then the distro / DE should be able to fully use it!

If a person has a VR headset, then the distro / DE should be able to fully use it!

A person o rmultiple persons, might use the computer for work or for personal use and they might need to edit or just see their personal photos or videos with HDR-metadata.

Or might play a game or watch a movie with HDR-metadata.

Well, in that case Linux Mint, along with all 3 desktop environments provided are not ready for this and will make a bad impression of Linux, probably even making a few users go back to Windows, where everything just work.

Why?

Because Linux Mint developers insists on quantity over quality!

And that's very bad for Linux adoption.

Look at KDE Plasma!

It's trying to solve everything!

It's coming with a easy-to-use traditional-style layout, yet is very powerful and customizable if one needs it.
It's coming with stronger protections for privacy and security as it supports Wayland.
It supports advanced features of a monitor / TV (10bit-colors, Freesync / VRR, HDR in version 6, DRM-leasing for VR)

It has great integration with other popular Qt-based programs (Kdenlive, Krita, Stellarium, Haruna, VLC, Calibre, Qbittorrent).
It has great integration with GTK-based programs too, much better than the reverse.

And no matter that it comes by default with an easy to use, traditional layout and behavior and it has so many features, the Linux Mint developers just plain refuse to use it and instead they offer their 3 less developed desktop environments, where none of them have these advanced features.

If this is not quantity-over-quality, I don't know what is.

If you follow other online forums, you will see that every day there is a Linux Mint user asking why some game, some GPU or some VR headset doesn't work well with its distro and it doesn't know that some of the bugs that he / she is experiencing have already been solved in other distros and desktop environments.

I think Linux Mint had the best distro and desktop environment 10 years ago, but now with the advancements in screens' resolutions / DPI, refresh rates, color-ranges, luminosity-ranges and privacy / security, it has fallen behind a lot.

Wayland support seems good, but it looks to me that it's too little, too late.