Cinnamon
Version: 5.0 Web: http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com
Even though the name on the Cinnamon home site suggests strong ties with Linux Mint, this desktop environment is a popular choice across many other Linux distributions. Cinnamon is a prominent GTK-based desktop and application set that was forked from the early Gnome Shell code.
Cinnamon’s distinctive style assumes a classic desktop layout with the bottom panel and the main menu located in its left-most part, similar to KDE or Windows. Most, if not all components of Cinnamon are based on the GTK3 UI toolkit, but at the same time are packed with extra features and settings that you wouldn’t normally find in basic GTK accessories.
Take the file manager for example. In Cinnamon the default file manager is Nemo, a fork of Nautilus. Nemo retained lots of abilities that Nautilus once had, such as the tree view in the sidebar, the status panel and so on. In this new Cinnamon 5.0 release Nemo has received even more enhancements, including an impressive update to the built-in search tool. Pressing Ctrl+F in Nemo now launches a redesigned bar that enables you to search for files or their contents from within the same search panel.
If you happen to use some extra Cinnamon applets (known as ‘spice'), you’ll notice that the applet manager has had a face-lift and now displays more useful information when browsing the list of applets. The Preferences>Automation section now includes the extra slider for enabling automatic applets update.
Browsing the Cinnamon application menu we also found a new tool called Bulky, for bulk file renaming using custom wildcards and regexps. Bulky is an improvement to Cinnamon’s productivity and automation features. The Cinnamon 5.0 desktop is going to be a part of Linux Mint 20.2, which now out in beta.