Multiple Desktops

[gillsman]

Hi all
I am running Linux Mint 20 which was originally installed with the Cinnamon DE, I have now installed the Mate DE alongside so I can choose which environment I boot into however I now find I am using Mate all the time & I wonder if I should uninstall the Cinnamon DE if I'm not using it rather than waste disc space, if so can I just go to the software manager (or Synaptic) & remove the meta package or should it be done through the terminal & that begs the question "What would be the correct command" or is it advisable to just leave it in case it breaks something.
Thanks for viewing

 

[Deleted member 101831]

If all is working I'd leave it as it is.

If this is a new install and not anything important and you prefer Mate over Cinnamon than I'd just do a clean install of Linux Mint Mate.

FWIW I've always found it's not a good Idea to remove the OEM desktop or use multiple desktops.

 

[gillsman]

If all is working I'd leave it as it is.

If this is a new install and not anything important and you prefer Mate over Cinnamon than I'd just do a clean install of Linux Mint Mate.

FWIW I've always found it's not a good Idea to remove the OEM desktop or use multiple desktops.

OK thanks for the reply, it's all working really well so I will leave it as it is then

 

[JasKinasis]

If all is working I'd leave it as it is.

If this is a new install and not anything important and you prefer Mate over Cinnamon than I'd just do a clean install of Linux Mint Mate.

FWIW I've always found it's not a good Idea to remove the OEM desktop or use multiple desktops.

Interesting! In my experience - you can have as many desktop environments as you like installed. And you can remove the original desktop environment too.

But then, I’ve never really installed, or used mint. So maybe mint is different somehow?!
But it’s worked fine for me with every other distro I’ve used.

 

[gillsman]

Interesting! In my experience - you can have as many desktop environments as you like installed. And you can remove the original desktop environment too.

But then, I’ve never really installed, or used mint. So maybe mint is different somehow?!
But it’s worked fine for me with every other distro I’ve used.

As I'm not sure i'm not going to mess with it just in case it breaks the system unless someone has the definitive answer with easy to follow instructions.
Thanks for your input though.

 

[dos2unix]

I've ran as many as 5 or 6 different desktop on a single Linux install. It takes a little space, but not that much. I've found out a lot of apps use different display libraries in the background anyway.

For example kmahjongg likes KDE libraries installed, VLC likes gnome, Parole like MATE,
but even though I have different desktop libraries installed to support the rendering of these applications, I stay in MATE most of the time.

 

[Deleted member 101831]

I like LXQT desktop because it's a light weight plain and simple and no eye candy desktop.

 

[Condobloke]

Cinnamon desktop.....space occupied in MB

Cinnamon

2903

Nor a great deal of space......leave it there

 

[Vrai]

Hi all
I am running Linux Mint 20 which was originally installed with the Cinnamon DE, I have now installed the Mate DE alongside so I can choose which environment I boot into however I now find I am using Mate all the time & I wonder if I should uninstall the Cinnamon DE if I'm not using it rather than waste disc space, if so can I just go to the software manager (or Synaptic) & remove the meta package or should it be done through the terminal & that begs the question "What would be the correct command" or is it advisable to just leave it in case it breaks something.
Thanks for viewing

It is very likely something will 'break' if you try to uninstall Cinnamon unless you know exactly which packages are safe to uninstall and which packages may be 'shared' with other desktop components.
Unless you really, really need the disk space I recommend leaving it as is.

 

[Alexzee]

As I'm not sure i'm not going to mess with it just in case it breaks the system unless someone has the definitive answer with easy to follow instructions.
Thanks for your input though.

See my signature line-

It's kept me safe over the years!

Also, when you start removing libraries and their dependencies it tends to break things.

 

[gillsman]

Thanks to all for your input

 

[LorenDB]

Cinnamon desktop.....space occupied in MB

Cinnamon

2903

Nor a great deal of space......leave it there

In MB? That's over 2 GB... I'd personally call that a little big...

 

[f33dm3bits]

Like others have already mentioned it is not a problem to have multiple desktops installed. What's this talk of not enough space and taking up too much space in this day and age where GB's and TB's are more than affordable and cheap.

However if you really want to you can. I assume you installed LM20 Cinnamon edition iso and then installed Mate Desktop? I just did the same one one of my test vm's, installed LM20 Cinnamon edition, then installed Mate, and finally removed Cinnamon. Didn't run into any problems, only a few packages are removed when uninstalling Cinnamon:

sudo apt-get remove cinnamon
[sudo] password for tux:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
cinnamon cinnamon-dbg mint-meta-cinnamon
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 3 to remove and 15 not upgraded.
After this operation, 2.358 kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
(Reading database ... 340169 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing cinnamon-dbg (4.6.7+ulyana) ...
Removing mint-meta-cinnamon (2020.07.09) ...
Removing cinnamon (4.6.7+ulyana) ...
Processing triggers for mime-support (3.64ubuntu1) ...
Processing triggers for gnome-menus (3.36.0-1ubuntu1) ...
Processing triggers for libglib2.0-0:amd64 (2.64.3-1~ubuntu20.04.1) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.9.1-1) ...
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.24+linuxmint1) ...

1. Make a backup of your current install. I think Mint uses Timeshift? (Just in case)
2. Open a terminal: sudo apt-get remove cinnamon
3. Reboot: just to be sure your system starts up again.
4. Login: See if everything looks and works as expected. If not restore from your backup.

 

[f33dm3bits]

I like LXQT desktop because it's a light weight plain and simple and no eye candy desktop.

If you like simple, you should try a tiling window manager

 

[Deleted member 101831]

I like window managers.

 

[JasKinasis]

If you like simple, you should try a tiling window manager

I love tiling window managers. Especially dwm!
I have dwm installed on every PC I use. Even on Windows 7 at work, with cygwin/X.