Love installing multiple gigabyte flatpaks of what would be 15mb exe files on Windows. I've enjoyed using Mint so far but there are definitely some things that suck, this is one of them

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[–] unwarlikeExtortion@lemmy.ml 16 points 2 days ago (1 children)

For some reason Mint hates flatpaks by claiming they're giant, when they really aren't.

Most of the "size" comes from core dependencies, which do take up space. However, Flatpak comes as part of Mint, and the few dependecies not included do take some space. But definitely not what Mint Store reports.

I'd write it up to Synaptic package manager being a bit lazy and just downloading the entire list of dependencies and running with it, instead of checkig what the flatpak package manager will actually download.

[–] doublepepperoni@hexbear.net 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

In that case, I retract my complaint, but they really should communicate the actual size better. I had nothing else to go off of so I assumed what the manager was saying was true.

Here's another minor complaint: I wish customisation was better. With Windows, you can easily pick a colour that gets applied to the taskbar, start menu, title bars, etc, but with Cinnamon at least you're stuck with white, gray and black with minor splashes of colour. There's also themes you can download but there's not too many of them and it's not exactly a rainbow of exciting colourways, most being more variations of grey and black. Apparently you can also edit a .css file somewhere but I'm a big dumdum that wants a nice colour wheel I can click on

[–] unwarlikeExtortion@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 days ago

No. It's a perfectly valid complaint, just pointed in the wrong direction perhaps.

About Cinammon: it isn't customizable because that isn't really why it exists. Its purpose is to have a lightweight, evocative-of-Windows desktop environment.

If you'd like a heavily customizable DE, the default choice is (KDE) Plasma. You can install it on Mint without a problem. There are plenty of guides, and this one seems a bit more concise than the other few I've checked.

My recommendation if you do check it out, however, is to use the "desktop" package (as opposed to the guide's "standard"). You'll just be missing out on KDE apps such as their text editor, but you already have one that works, and you can always install it manually.

Cinnamon is made by the Mint devs for Mint the distro. Plasma is made as a uber-featured DE for anyone. Which doesn't make Plasma any better, it's just that their goals are different.

Cinnamon values simplicity and low resource use, while plasma prefers complexity and customizability (which causes a bit of bloat).