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Cinnamon is a fork of GNOME originally developed for Linux Mint and is a fork of GNOME 3.x attempting to provide a modern but traditional and highly functional user interface for Linux users.
SpecsUpdate
Pros
Pro Highly customizable
There's no limit to what you can change on Cinnamon, if you know how to do it. It is very easy to customize using the built-in theme and applet tools, it automatically installs themes and desktop/panel applets for you, so you mostly won't have to go search online for them.
Pro You can easily get it to look like Windows
You can get it to closely look and behave like Windows with considerable ease. This is a good thing for those switching from Windows, because it gives them a familiar environment, cutting down on the learning curve a bit. Among the popular DE's this is the one that gets you closest with great ease.
Pro Lots of configuration options
Both Gnome and Cinnamon got the same looking configuration panel. There are 40 sub-panels in Linux Mint Cinnamon's, whenever there a far less with Ubuntu Gnome 3's.
Windows, notification, smart corners, windows overlay, connexion windows... You can have those in Gnome, but that requires compiz and other stuff.
Pro Cinnamon provides control of icon placement on multiple monitors
Cinnamon provides control of the placement of desktop icons on multiple monitor setups. This feature has been buggy, but in the testing of Linux Mint 19, this feature appeared to be stable. Thus, Cinnamon joins KDE and Windows in enabling this capability. For example, in a setup with 2 or 3 monitors, you can put the desktop icons on the right-hand monitor. With other DEs, the icons always move to the left-hand monitor.
Cons
Con Few themes
Rather than using actual GTK theming, Cinnamon appears to vye for its own strange infrastructure that isn't compatible across any other desktop.
Recommendations
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Flagged Pros + Cons
Pro Very easy to customize
Is very easy to customize using the built in theme and applet tools, It automatically installs themes and desktop/panel applets for you, so you mostly won't have to go search online for them.
Pro Nice themes and extensions
Very easy to make this desktop your own both in terms of looks and functionality.