Cinnamon looks weird on fresh Arch install

[protocol7]

I've been running Linux Mint for some time in a VM and wanted to try running Arch natively on a spare drive. I install Arch using the included archinstall script and pick Cinnamon from the DE choices.

However, on boot, there is no desktop background. If I right-click on the desktop to choose a background, the background panel is empty. Just a list of background categories down the left side.

Is there something wrong/missing with the Cinnamon files Arch is using? Gnome and KDE work fine but are not to my taste.

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

Do you have NVIDIA graphic card? I read online that NVIDIA can bring up problems..

 

Try this command. Go into TTY2:

sudo /usr/bin/gdk-pixbuf-query-loaders --update-cache

 

[protocol7]

On 15/07/2023 at 16:11, Mindovermaster said:

Do you have NVIDIA graphic card? I read online that NVIDIA can bring up problems..

Yep, I have a 670.  I'm running the current 470xx drivers via AUR.

I tried that command from TTY2 but it didn't make any difference. I've attached a pic of how it looks at the moment. I already fixed the fonts (which defaulted to some typewriter style font) and installed some themes and icons to fix the missing icons for a lot of the installed apps and places. I should have taken a shot from a fresh install to show how broken it looks out of the box.

Previously I tried the Cinnamon edition of Manjaro ( for convenience as it has a live cd) and it had none of these issues, even with my 670.

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

Does this do anything?

sudo pacman -S cinnamon

It should say everything is installed, but Arch might not have everything that Cinnamon has to offer.. You know, like "vanilla cinnamon" where everything isn't installed.

[pmrd]

On 15/07/2023 at 11:11, Mindovermaster said:

Do you have NVIDIA graphic card? I read online that NVIDIA can bring up problems..

 

Try this command. Go into TTY2:

sudo /usr/bin/gdk-pixbuf-query-loaders --update-cache

 

And people wonder why Linux isn't overtaking Windows lol

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

On 15/07/2023 at 11:16, PmRd said:

And people wonder why Linux isn't overtaking Windows lol

Dude, there's 1Mil different problems. Good thing? There's fixes for almost anything.

With Windows, you have to wait until they fix it, not fix it yourself

Edit: I'm trying to help him, this is the way Linux works.

[pmrd]

On 15/07/2023 at 12:19, Mindovermaster said:

Dude, there's 1Mil different problems. Good thing? There's fixes for almost anything.

With Windows, you have to wait until they fix it, not fix it yourself

Windows just works for the majority of people there's nothing to fix.

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

On 15/07/2023 at 11:25, PmRd said:

Windows just works for the majority of people there's nothing to fix.

Might work fine for you, but I've seen a lot of horror stories from Win 11..

A LOT of people are moving from Windows to Linux. Everyone? No.

if you aren't helping OP, get out of here.

[protocol7]

On 15/07/2023 at 17:14, Mindovermaster said:

Does this do anything?

sudo pacman -S cinnamon

It should say everything is installed, but Arch might not have everything that Cinnamon has to offer.. You know, like "vanilla cinnamon" where everything isn't installed.

It says that cinnamon is already at the latest version. Nothing is missing. I let it reinstall cinnamon anyway but unsurprisingly there was no change.

UPDATE:

Here's a couple of lines from the archinstall logfile showing the packages being installed for xorg and cinnamon (for this install I left it on the open-source nvidia drivers):

Quote

Installing packages: ('xorg-server', 'xorg-xinit', 'mesa', 'xf86-video-nouveau', 'libva-mesa-driver')
Installing packages: ['cinnamon', 'system-config-printer', 'gnome-keyring', 'gnome-terminal', 'blueberry', 'metacity', 'lightdm', 'lightdm-gtk-greeter']

 

Prior to running that I wiped and reinstalled from scratch to get a pic of how it looks out of the box:

Edited July 15, 2023 by protocol7
added some log output

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

Huh, I never used Cinnamon in Arch. I only ever used XFCE and KDE.

There any reason you need vanilla Arch? There are a lot of Arch-based Distros that might be better for you. As Endeavour, ArcoLinux, XeroLinux. Don't go with Garuda or Manjaro. They are in the gray realm.

[protocol7]

I just like having a clean slate to start from. With archinstall I can get the latest base system, kernel (even kernel variants like zen) and DE in one hit. So long as the latter isn't Cinnamon...

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

With ArcoLinux, you can choose every program. No strings attached. It isn't heavy like Manjaro.

[protocol7]

After a little more digging around, I found this post with a helpful command. Running cinnamon-settings backgrounds  threw up the following error for each of the arch backgrounds I had installed:

Failed to convert /usr/share/backgrounds/archlinux/archbtw.png: module 'PIL.Image' has no attribute 'ANTIALIAS'

Searching for this brought me to here where a suggested fix was to downgrade pillow to 9.5. Cinnamon requires pillow, so I wasn't able to uninstall it. However, installing the 9.5 branch of pillow replaced the newer, broken one and now the backgrounds display.

Edited July 15, 2023 by protocol7

[Nick H. Supervisor]

On 15/07/2023 at 17:16, PmRd said:

And people wonder why Linux isn't overtaking Windows lol

 

On 15/07/2023 at 17:25, PmRd said:

Windows just works for the majority of people there's nothing to fix.

If you don't have anything constructive to say, I don't know why you would bother to waste your time and others'.

But then again, there is plenty of flak that can and is thrown at Windows systems.  "Just works" and "nothing to fix"? Until the next Patch Tuesday that breaks something while trying to address another issue...

All Operating Systems have issues, and to offer no advice and just try and ridicule someone for their choice of OS is not only unhelpful, but childish.

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

On 15/07/2023 at 13:01, protocol7 said:

After a little more digging around, I found this post with a helpful command. Running cinnamon-settings backgrounds  threw up the following error for each of the arch backgrounds I had installed:

Failed to convert /usr/share/backgrounds/archlinux/archbtw.png: module 'PIL.Image' has no attribute 'ANTIALIAS'

Searching for this brought me to here where a suggested fix was to downgrade pillow to 9.5. Cinnamon requires pillow, so I wasn't able to uninstall it. However, installing the 9.5 branch of pillow replaced the newer, broken one and now the backgrounds display.

Weird.. Never had to downgrade anything.

Glad you got it fixed  

[protocol7]

On 15/07/2023 at 21:50, Mindovermaster said:

Weird.. Never had to downgrade anything.

Glad you got it fixed  

I just checked the github for cinnamon and they've already replaced the offending code so a downgrade won't be needed soon (and I found another way to fix it in the corresponding bug report).

I'm used to Debian where everything is stable to the point of stale, so Arch is proving to be the bleeding edge it promised

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

On 15/07/2023 at 18:32, protocol7 said:

I just checked the github for cinnamon and they've already replaced the offending code so a downgrade won't be needed soon (and I found another way to fix it in the corresponding bug report).

I'm used to Debian where everything is stable to the point of stale, so Arch is proving to be the bleeding edge it promised

I'm an old Debian guy, too. I started with Squeeze. Arch is bleeding edge, but I'm thinking of moving back, as I no longer need the newest and greatest.

I was thinking of going with Debian Testing. So I'm closer to the bleeding edge, but still safe.