By May 2014, Cinnamon had matured from a promising GNOME Shell fork into a genuinely polished desktop environment, and version 2.2 was the release that proved it. The Linux Mint team had spent two years refining the panel system, improving the Nemo file manager, stabilising the window manager (Muffin, their fork of Mutter), and adding the kind of small quality-of-life features — edge tiling, workspace management, a proper settings application — that made Cinnamon feel like a complete desktop rather than a protest fork. If you were running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and found Unity’s lens-and-scope approach frustrating, Cinnamon 2.2 offered a traditional desktop metaphor with modern compositing, excellent theme support, and a coherent settings experience. This guide covers adding the PPA, installing Cinnamon 2.2, selecting it at the login screen, configuring themes and panels, and dealing with the handful of issues that could arise when running Cinnamon on Ubuntu rather than its native Linux Mint. We ran Cinnamon 2.2 as our daily driver on Ubuntu 14.04 for over a year on both a ThinkPad T440s and a desktop with an AMD Radeon HD 7870, and it was remarkably stable. For an earlier take on Cinnamon installation, see our Cinnamon 1.8 on Ubuntu 13.04 guide.
What Cinnamon 2.2 Brought to the Table
Cinnamon 2.2 was a significant step forward from earlier versions. The headline improvements included:
- Edge tiling and snapping — drag a window to the left or right edge to tile it to half the screen, or to a corner for quarter-tiling. This was responsive and smooth, unlike some earlier implementations.
- Improved Nemo file manager — Nemo, Cinnamon’s fork of Nautilus, gained better performance with large directories, a cleaner toolbar, and reliable dual-pane mode.
- Cinnamon Settings overhaul — the settings application was reorganised into logical categories (Appearance, Preferences, Hardware, Administration) with search functionality.
- Spice support — applets, desklets, themes, and extensions could be browsed and installed directly from within Cinnamon Settings, similar to how GNOME Extensions work but integrated into the desktop’s own settings tool.
- Better Muffin compositor — reduced screen tearing on Intel and AMD GPUs, improved V-Sync handling, and lower idle CPU usage.
Prerequisites
You need a working Ubuntu 14.04 LTS installation. Cinnamon 2.2 ran well on modest hardware — a dual-core CPU and 2 GB of RAM was sufficient, though 4 GB made multitasking more comfortable. A GPU with OpenGL 2.0 support was required for the compositor; virtually all GPUs from 2008 onward met this requirement.
Confirm your Ubuntu version:
lsb_release -a
You should see 14.04 in the output.
Step-by-Step Installation
Step 1: Add the Cinnamon PPA
The official Ubuntu 14.04 repositories did not include Cinnamon 2.2. The community PPA provided up-to-date packages:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lestcape/cinnamon
sudo apt-get update
Step 2: Install Cinnamon
sudo apt-get install cinnamon
This installs the Cinnamon desktop environment, Muffin window manager, Nemo file manager, and the Cinnamon settings daemon. The download is approximately 150–200 MB depending on what GTK3 libraries you already have installed.
Step 3: Log Out and Select Cinnamon
Log out of your current session. At the LightDM login screen, click the session selector icon (a small gear or Ubuntu logo next to the password field) and choose Cinnamon. Enter your password and log in.
You should be greeted by the Cinnamon desktop — a bottom panel with a menu button on the left, a window list in the centre, and a system tray on the right.
Step 4: Verify the Cinnamon Version
Open a terminal and run:
cinnamon --version
This should report Cinnamon 2.2.x. If it reports an older version, the PPA may not have been added correctly — re-run sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get upgrade.
Step 5: Configure the Desktop
Right-click the desktop and select Customise or open Cinnamon Settings from the menu:
cinnamon-settings
Key areas to configure:
Themes — Cinnamon separates themes into four components: window borders, icons, controls (GTK), and the desktop (Cinnamon shell). You can mix and match. The default Cinnamon theme works well, but the Mint-X and Mint-Y themes are popular alternatives that can be downloaded from the Themes section of Cinnamon Settings.
Panel — the bottom panel can be moved to the top or sides, set to auto-hide, and customised with applets. Right-click the panel and select Panel Settings.
Applets — add applets to the panel by right-clicking it and selecting “Add applets to the panel.” Useful additions include the workspace switcher, system monitor, and weather applet.
Hot corners — configure screen corners to trigger actions (show all windows, show the desktop, run a command) via Cinnamon Settings → Hot Corners.
Nemo File Manager
Nemo replaced Nautilus as Cinnamon’s default file manager and was, frankly, better in almost every way for power users. Key features:
- Dual-pane mode — press F3 to split the view. Drag files between panes for quick copying or moving.
- Embedded terminal — press F4 to open a terminal pane at the bottom of the file manager, automatically cd’d to the current directory.
- Type-ahead search — start typing in any directory to filter files by name. Faster than the search dialog for quick lookups.
- Root mode — open the current location as root via the file menu. Useful for editing system configuration files.
To make Nemo the default file manager (if Nautilus was still handling desktop icons and file associations):
xdg-mime default nemo.desktop inode/directory application/x-gnome-saved-search
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background show-desktop-icons false
gsettings set org.nemo.desktop show-desktop-icons true
Common Pitfalls
Screen tearing on Intel GPUs. Muffin’s V-Sync implementation was not perfect on all Intel drivers in 2014. If you see horizontal tearing during video playback or window dragging, enable “Prevent screen tearing” in Cinnamon Settings → General. If that does not fully resolve it, create /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf with a TearFree option set to true for the Intel driver.
Cinnamon crashes and falls back to software rendering. If Cinnamon detects that the GPU cannot handle its compositor, it falls back to “Cinnamon 2D” or software rendering mode. This happened on some older ATI/AMD GPUs with the open-source radeon driver. Check the driver situation with glxinfo | grep "OpenGL renderer" — if it shows llvmpipe or Software Rasterizer, your GPU driver is not providing hardware acceleration. Install the proprietary fglrx driver if available for your card, or update Mesa.
Nemo and Nautilus conflict over desktop icons. If both Nemo and Nautilus are trying to manage the desktop, you get duplicate icons or a blank desktop. The fix is to disable Nautilus desktop management with gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background show-desktop-icons false and enable Nemo’s with gsettings set org.nemo.desktop show-desktop-icons true.
Missing system tray icons. Some applications (Skype, Dropbox, Pidgin) use legacy system tray protocols. Cinnamon 2.2 supports both the old XEmbed tray and the newer StatusNotifier protocol. If icons are missing, check that the system tray applet is added to the panel — right-click the panel, select “Add applets,” and ensure “Systray” is enabled.
PPA key errors during apt-get update. If you see GPG key errors after adding the PPA, import the key manually: sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys <KEY_ID>, replacing <KEY_ID> with the key fingerprint shown in the error message.
Removing Cinnamon
If you decide Cinnamon is not for you, remove it cleanly:
sudo apt-get remove cinnamon cinnamon-common cinnamon-settings-daemon nemo
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:lestcape/cinnamon
Log out, select Ubuntu (Unity) at the login screen, and log back in. Your Unity session will be exactly as you left it.
Looking Back
Cinnamon 2.2 on Ubuntu 14.04 was one of those combinations that just worked. It was stable enough for daily use, attractive enough to show off, configurable enough for power users, and lightweight enough not to punish older hardware. The Linux Mint team built something genuinely good, and running it on Ubuntu’s rock-solid 14.04 LTS base gave you the best of both worlds — Cinnamon’s desktop experience with Ubuntu’s package ecosystem and long-term support. For those who installed Cinnamon 1.8 on Ubuntu 13.04 and wanted the next step, 2.2 was a worthy upgrade in every respect.