Installing The Cinnamon Desktop Environment In Fedora 16

Cinnamon is a very recent addition to the list of desktop environments available for Linux, BSD and other UNIX-like operating systems. It was started by Clement Lefebvre and his crew at Linux Mint and it is an attempt to make the GNOME 3 desktop more user-friendly.

If you are not happy with GNOME 3, and are using Fedora 16, that is, the main edition, which uses the GNOME 3 desktop environment, you will find Cinnamon a lot more fun to use. This short tutorial gives the steps on how to install and use it.

Installing Cinnamon entails adding the Cinnamon repository to the system. There are two methods of getting that done. The simplest is to run the following command (as root or with sudo):

curl http://repos.fedorapeople.org/repos/leigh123linux/cinnamon/fedora-cinnamon.repo -o /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-cinnamon.repo

Then install the cinnamon package by typing (as root or with sudo):

yum install cinnamon

Though it accomplishes the same thing, the second method is a little bit more involved: Copy and paste the following:

# Place this file in your /etc/yum.repos.d/ directory

[fedora-cinnamon]
name=Cinnamon provides core user interface functions for the GNOME 3 desktop
baseurl=http://repos.fedorapeople.org/repos/leigh123linux/cinnamon/fedora-$releasever/$basearch/
enabled=1
skip_if_unavailable=1
gpgcheck=0

[fedora-cinnamon-source]
name=Cinnamon provides core user interface functions for the GNOME 3 desktop - Source
baseurl=http://repos.fedorapeople.org/repos/leigh123linux/cinnamon/fedora-$releasever/SRPMS
enabled=0
skip_if_unavailable=1
gpgcheck=0

into a file and name the file: cinnamon-fedora.repo

Save the file. As root(or with sudo), copy or move it from where you saved it to: /etc/yum.repos.d/ directory with the following command:

cp cinnamon-fedora.repo /etc/yum.repos.d/

The /etc/yum.repos.d/ directory is where repository files (.repo files) are located. On a new installation, there should be three other .repo files in that directory. Now, install the packages for Cinnamon with the following command(as root or with sudo):

yum install cinnamon

Once everything is installed, simply log out of your current session, select Cinnamon from the login screen and enjoy your new installation of the Cinnamon Desktop Environment.