14 DAY TRIAL // Apparently, the creator and lead developer of the Linux Mint project, Clement Lefebvre, already works on the next major release of the acclaimed Cinnamon open-source desktop environment.
According to Mr. Lefebvre, Cinnamon 2.8 will bring (for now) features like better box pointers, beautifying weird looking box pointers (see the screenshot attached at the end of the article) - these patches have been imported from the GNOME desktop environment by JosephM - and information about a device's model and vendor.
While working on improving power management for the Cinnamon desktop environment, Clement Lefebvre noticed that there's was no information about manufacturer's data in the Power applet and settings section of the Control Panel, something that apparently was present in the Xfce 4.12 desktop environment. Therefore this information will now be present in Cinnamon 2.8.
"One thing immediately caught my attention because both the Xfce and the Cinnamon teams had worked on improving power management… and that was the presence of manufacturer data in the power settings and applet," says Clement Lefebvre. "That’s something we missed in Cinnamon 2.6, I guess we didn’t really think about it, and so that’s something we just added for the upcoming Cinnamon 2.8."
Not all manufacturers add the model/vendor information
To better understand how the presence of manufacturer data on the Cinnamon's Power settings and applet will help you, please take a look at the attached screenshot. For example, a mouse device that is now generically named "wireless mouse" in Cinnamon 2.6, it will be displayed as "Logitech M325" in Cinnamon 2.8, or whatever your mouse's manufacturer and model information is.
According to Mr. Lefebvre, this feature alone is good news for Cinnamon users that have multiple rechargeable devices with the same label, and/or multiple batteries connected to their computers, no matter the Linux kernel-based operating system used. However, please note that not all manufacturers add the model/vendor information to their devices.
