Cinnamon Won't Start in FreeBSD 11.1

T

tripseven

Hello,

New to FreeBSD and just installed 11.1 as per Trihexagonal's Beginners Guide - How To Set Up A FreeBSD Desktop From Scratch. Fluxbox, XFE and Eterm appears to work correctly when using starx command.

I decided to install Cinnamon according to the Cinnamon portion of this guide https://www.linuxsecrets.com/entry/51-freebsd/2017/09/04/2942-configure-5-freebsd-x-environments.

I now have a nice login screen but instead of loading Cinnamon it loads Eterm and Xfe in fluxbox.
I put # in front of Eterm, Xfe and fluxbox leaving only exec cinnamon in ~.xinitrc but got stuck in a continuous loop on login screen. Got that fixed back to

Code: 
Eterm &
xfe &
exec fluxbox
exec cinnamon
[/CMD]

Any help would be most appreciated getting this desktop to load correctly.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I presume that the login manager is slim or gdm. You need to a entry to that login manager, a file called cinnamon.desktop in /usr/local/share/xsessions. That file need to contain the following:

Code: 
[LIST=1]
[*][Desktop Entry]

[*]Encoding=UTF-8

[*]Name=Cinnamon

[*]Exec=/usr/local/bin/cinnamon

[*]Comment=This session logs you into Cinnamon desktop environment

[*]Type=Application

[/LIST]

Also in .xinitrc you need to add exec cinnamon-session not exec cinnamon.
 
lebarondemerde, could you be more specific about what is broken with Cinnamon, please?
tripseven said:
Code: 
Eterm &
xfe &
exec fluxbox
exec cinnamon
Click to expand...
Why do you expect Cinnamon to start when you command your computer to run fluxbox?
It did just what it should do.
What happens when you place exec [B][I]cinnamon-session[/I][/B] into the .xinitrc as Minbari said, and remove the other exec commands?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Minbari said:
I presume that the login manager is slim or gdm. You need to a entry to that login manager, a file called cinnamon.desktop in /usr/local/share/xsessions. That file need to contain the following:

Code: 
[LIST=1]
[*][Desktop Entry]

[*]Encoding=UTF-8

[*]Name=Cinnamon

[*]Exec=/usr/local/bin/cinnamon

[*]Comment=This session logs you into Cinnamon desktop environment

[*]Type=Application
[/LIST]

Also in .xinitrc you need to add exec cinnamon-session not exec cinnamon.
Click to expand...

Got that done but had to remove Fluxbox. Also removed Xfe and Eterm. Now I have a Cinnamon desktop that is just a black screen with an "X" for mouse pointer. Right click, create folder, open folder opens in Nemo window. Shouldn't there be a start menu in lower left of screen? And yes on Slim.
 
Snurg said:
lebarondemerde, could you be more specific about what is broken with Cinnamon, please?
Why do you expect Cinnamon to start when you command your computer to run fluxbox?
It did just what it should do.
What happens when you place exec [B][I]cinnamon-session[/I][/B] into the .xinitrc as Minbari said, and remove the other exec commands?
Click to expand...

Was just putting things back the way it was before asking for help as I'm learning. My previous post answers your final question. Thanks for responding!
 
I have no experience with Cinnamon except of a 5 minute trial a few years ago.
The issue that you report could (just my wild unqualified guess) be caused by the removal of fluxbox and the cleanup changes to the configuration involved.
If that is the cause, you might be able to solve the issue by pkg delete cinnamon and then pkg (re)installing cinnamon again to make sure it gets configured correctly.
 
tripseven said:
A few more irritations and I will go with something else. What do you use/recommend?
Click to expand...

Doing so now.

FreeBSD is not Linux and there is a steep learning curve, which makes it all the more rewarding when you accomplish what you set out to do. In this instance, get a fully functional desktop.

If a little work getting it straightened out, after you had one and decided to go with something else, is too much trouble save yourself the headache.
 
lebarondemerde said:
This is what I was talking about. :)
Click to expand...
Hmm. Are there really no guys who got it working?
Shouldn't then the Cinnamon port be marked as defunct?

Trihexagonal said:
FreeBSD is not Linux and there is a steep learning curve, which makes it all the more rewarding when you accomplish what you set out to do. In this instance, get a fully functional desktop.
Click to expand...
Umm. I believe Linux is not really easier if you take away the GUI stuff. Possibly in fact harder because there is so much wild-grown variation and permanent change.

tripseven said:
A few more irritations and I will go with something else. What do you use/recommend?
Click to expand...
KDE, Gnome, LXDE, XFCE all work well afaik.
Personally I do not like conventional desktops.

Because of my ADHD I use FVWM because it is not like a Las Vegas Strip blinking on my screen.
The only WM widget I have on screen is the 48-screen pager.
No icons, trays, bars, menus and all that stuff that annoys me because it distracts me.
 
First and foremost great comments...great community!

I'm now thinking of giving WM a shot as I'm a glutton for punishment on the learning curve :p

Searching images of suggestions regarding WM's BSPWM and FVWM they appear to be configurable to resemble a windows/linux type DE. So now I'm willing to give it a go with some form of WM. The question is...which one? I guess the better question would be...what makes a person choose one over the other?
 
I think I am too nerdy to give sensible suggestions... anyway KDE has a full set of well-done applications, I like that. I know many will frown but what I normally do when setting up a system for me, is installing KDE and FVWM. I just use the KDE apps (Kate, Konsole, Okular, Dolphin, Konqueror, K3b, ...) without the annoyance that the KDE desktop makes to my ADHD.

Particularly I like the FVWM pager concept very much.
You organize and find your windows like papers side-by-side on a real desktop, instead like a stack of papers on your lap like the usual DE do.
The autofocus/autoraise also is a thing I do not want to miss.
The only DM that comes near to FVWM's capabilities in this regard is KDE. But it uses a lot of memory compared to FVWM.
I never found FVWM exceed a memory usage of 78MB (but that was with 48 screens with about 100 windows of all sorts open).

The drawback is, FVWM is not exactly easy to configure. But if you just need a simple but powerful desktop, the effort pays off. I am using my configuration for many years now. This saves me from the recurring repeated reconfiguring like it is necessary after installing normal DMs just to throw out all the stuff that triggers my ADHD.
 
tripseven said:
I'm now thinking of giving WM a shot as I'm a glutton for punishment on the learning curve :p
Click to expand...

Good. I don't want to see you give up, especially since you've managed to get a Fluxbox desktop up and running. I'm glad you got some use from the tutorial.

Snurg is, of course, correct. When I think of Linux it's of Debian and what you get with an install from a Live Disk and using apt.

There are very detailed threads about which WM is best and everyone has a viable, convincing argument why theirs works best for them. I like Fluxbox, and since you've already successfully set it up once, why not give it a try? Programs are added to the menu by plain text file in the ~/.fluxbox directory.

Edit: You didn't specify if you used ports and ports-mgmt/portmaster or pkg, but if you used portmaster it is being updated frequently due to the recent introduction of flavors to ports, and was again today. You want to stay with the latest version so you would need to run:

# pkg delete portmaster
# cd /usr/ports/ports-mgmt/portmaster
# make install clean

to get the latest version. It can't build itself.
 
Snurg said:
I am using my configuration for many years now. This saves me from the recurring repeated reconfiguring like it is necessary after installing normal DMs just to throw out all the stuff that triggers my ADHD.
Click to expand...

I like things in an orderly fashion, and doing things step-by-step so as to keep my OCD in check. :)
 
OK obviously I hadn't realized the vast amount of WMs available to suit ones taste. Since Fluxbox is already installed I will play with it for a bit to see how it goes. Meanwhile feel free to offer any suggestions on other WMs as I'm finding Youtube has a ton of vids in this regard and can get a great visual.

A personal thanks again to all!
 
Cinnamon needs work. I have the base WM up, but don't recall everything I had to do because I was also fighting with getting i915 to work on the original i915GM. In any case at least settings/date-time fail due to python syntax changes.
Code: 
File "./cinnamon-settings", line 8
    print "Python module"
                                  ^
SyntaxError: Missing parentheses in call to 'print'.
Fixing the print syntax issues gets to line 20
Code: 
...
ValueError: execv() arg 2 first element cannot be empty
Simply changing cinnamon-settings to use python2 gets a little further, but that eventually trips over syntax errors in /usr/local/lib/cinnamon-settings.py. Despite the misdirection of multiple changes in python syntax I fixed all of those that gave me a line number, but that eventually gives back a useless fail.
Code: 
<class 'SyntaxError'>

Fundamentally maintenance appears to have stopped on both this and vlc which fails over Qt4/5 version mismatches. I understand that keeping up with stupid change-for-its-own-sake maneuvers by the Linux/python/Qt devs is a challenge, but some of these changes are relatively old.
Before directing me to a different DE, consider that this is a 10 year old laptop that I am setting up for my daughter. The goal is a light-weight replacement for XP that was on it to do basic web browsing. Cinnamon looks like the right DE for the task, but I will not put the braindead linux OS of the week under it. FreeBSD is the right OS, but all the desktop efforts appear to be focused on the high-end, with incomplete instructions in the man page or wiki, and inconsistent recommendations in the forum about when/where/how to load the multi-part intel drivers. Porting a moving target is not trivial,and I do appreciate all the effort that has been put in. Just keep in mind that some of the end users are not capable of dealing with version mismatch issues.
 
tonyhain said:
Before directing me to a different DE, consider that this is a 10 year old laptop that I am setting up for my daughter. The goal is a light-weight replacement for XP that was on it to do basic web browsing.
Click to expand...

XFCE. Probably one of the best maintained full featured DE on FreeBSD[1]. :)

[1] just need some work to de-uglify.
 
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