It looks like the Cinnamon desktop is no longer being maintained in Tumbleweed, and that I should expect no updates to version 4. Fortunately, my current Cinnamon version 3.8.9 works flawlessly, and I still like it better than anything I’ve been able to configure with Plasma, Gnome or Enlightenment.
Are there any security or stability issues with running an out-of-date desktop with Tumbleweed? Every other OS component is up-to-date, regularly kept current through zypper dup … but not Cinnamon. I don’t know enough about how the desktop coexists with the OS to know if this gives me anything to be concerned about, so I’ll risk asking my perhaps foolish question here.
First,
I would expect that anything you’d find from an openSUSE repository is supported and generally reviewed.
If you find or suspect a specific issue, then you can post in these Forums or submit a bug to the openSUSE bugzilla.
As for Cinnamon 4,
As of today,
Looks like a Cinnamon 4.0.9 is available in one of the openSUSE repos…
And, that’s aside from finding several “cinnamon4” libraries now available.
I couldn’t open Cinnamon settings, and had to manually edit /usr/share/cinnamon/cinnamon-settings/bin/imtools.py as per user FrancoARossi’s instructions. I believe that this issue has been fixed in more recent Cinnamon version
My browser settings had concealed everything under the first green ‘Direct Install’ button. I loaded the link in a different browser, and now see the links to 4.0.10. Thank you, tsu2, and apologies for my oversight. I also found the link for the ‘Next’ repository, which has Cin4 now:
Until sometime late last year, I regularly received Cinnamon updates with only these stable repositories active. I once added an experimental Cinnamon repository (or at least I think it’s experimental), at:
but soon clobbered my system with it enabled, and quickly disabled it after restoring the partition / cleaning up the mess. I’d prefer to compute without bleeding edge repositories, if I can help it.
I now show my ignorance of how the repositories work (and it’s about time I learned!):
Do new packages first land in experimental / bleeding edge repositories, and then migrate to the tried-and-true repositories after a period of testing? If so, now that I see Cinnamon 4 in the ‘Next’ repository, can I eventually expect to see it in my mainstream repositories, which furnished Cinnamon updates in the past? Or should I plan to activate another repository if I ever want to see Cin4 on my system?
The Cinnamon Maintainers seem to be doing things their own way, not forming with how Desktops are generally packaged… perhaps the most obvious is that for a long time now there is no “Pattern” that separates core packaging from dependencies (I’m sure that has to affect how easily Cinnamon is updated/maintained).
In that case, I fear that I might be back to square one.
Until sometime in late 2018, I could keep Cinnamon up to date and running reliably by invoking zypper dup with my suite of conventional repositories. Now it sounds like I can:
Enable an experimental repository, and pray that it doesn’t break the desktop
Stick with the out-of-date Cinnamon provided by my current repositories
Learn to like KDE Plasma or Gnome
Hop distros
I like Tumbleweed, but wonder now if I should have stuck with one of the standard desktops offered on install. (Gnome, KDE or XFCE, if I remember correctly.) openSUSE, SUSE or someone connected to one or both will may sure that these are maintained in a predictable way. For a non-standard desktop: maybe yes, but if a key team member steps away from maintenance chores, I won’t be able to count on others to pick up the slack, and may be stranded.