Cinnamon is a GTK+-based desktop environment. It originally started as a fork of the GNOME Shell, which is a user interface and was initially developed by (and for) Linux Mint. Cinnamon provides many features, including: Desktop effects, including animations, Applets, Desklets, and transition effects; A movable panel equipped with a main menu, launchers, a window list and the system tray; Various extensions; Applets that appear on the panel; Overview with functions similar to that in GNOME Shell; and Settings editor for easy customization. It can customize: The panel, The calendar, Themes, Desktop effects, Applets, Extensions.
Mint team released new version 3.2 of Cinnamon with new features and bugs fixes, rich settings to enhance desktop using Cinnamon Control Center. In version 3.2, and similar to MATE or Xfce, Cinnamon is an entire desktop environment built on GNOME technologies. It still uses tool-kits and libraries such as GTK or Clutter and it is still compatible with all GNOME applications, but it no longer requires GNOME itself to be installed. It now communicates directly with its own backend services, libraries and daemons: cinnamon-desktop, cinnamon-session and cinnamon-settings-daemon.
