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As of today, Thursday, August 16, 2012, I have updated the .deb files for Cinnamon and Muffin for amd64 and i386. Can't have one without the other.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/cinnamondebian/files/
Cinnamon is now 1.5.2
Muffin is now 1.0.6
These new packages break the old packages. Please make sure to remove Cinnamon 1.4.0 and Muffin 1.0.3 prior to installing these new versions. If not Gdebi will complain about the break and will not let you install. There are various methods of installing but I prefer a combo of gdebi, command-line ap-get, synaptic.
A new feature included in this version is Cinnamon 2D. In my testing it ran well with no major hiccups. I also noticed that the battery notification updates accordingly on my laptop (this was an issue I experienced in 1.4 version of Cinnamon).
Many thanks to Clement Lefebvre and any other person working on Cinnamon and Linux Mint. Clement Lefebvre's source for Cinnamon is available through git at:
https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon
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Old Post: 05/17/2012
I've recently built from source the Cinnamon Desktop environment for anyone willing to try. I followed this guide: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=190&t=90277 to build from source.
Disclaimer: I cannot and will not guarantee that these packages will work on your system and may even break it.
My reasons for compiling these packages were simple:
1. I wanted to try Cinnamon on a pure Debian system. I have nothing against LMDE, I just wanted to try it on my Debian Testing system.
2. The packages provided by http://packages.linuxmint.com/debian would not install. I am running Testing and recently as of 05-16-2012 a required dependency, namely libcogl5, is no longer in the repos.
Packages from the ubuntu ppa https://launchpad.net/~gwendal-lebihan- ... mon-stable were also incompatible at the moment because Gnome in Testing is not as up-to-date as Sid.
3. I wanted to compile something from source as a learning experience.
I have uploaded the debs to sourceforge:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/cinnamondebian/files/
for anyone wanting and willing to try.
There are builds for amd64 and i386. Please download all debs(except maybe for libmuffin-dev) and install accordingly.
In my experience, I used Gdebi and installed in the following order to avoid dependecy issues:
1.muffin should be installed prior to cinnamon.
2.muffin-common
3.libmuffin0
4.gir1.2-muffin
5.muffin
6.libmuffin-dev (optional)
7.cinnamon (system may ask to install caribou)
Requirements to run Cinnamon:
*Same as those required to run Gnome 3. If I'm not mistaken Gnome 3 must also be installed.
For more information on the Cinnamon (Desktop)/(Shell) Environment:
http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/