Cinnamon developer has tagged 6.6.x releases on their github projects, meaning that the official release of Cinnamon 6.6 is imminent now official. I have prepared a special branch (6.6) pushed on both github and gitlab for those who wanted to test the script (Note: i haven't tried to build this yet). This branch is targeting for Slackware-Current users, so it may not work for users running Slackware 15.0 (again, i have not tested this under 15.0 since master branch is tracking -current only).

Update: Binaries are now pushed to slackware.uk (thanks to Tadgy for providing this space) 

As usual, Cinnamon is improving on every release, but it wasn't like a revolutionary changes, more like small improvements on every aspect. Some highlight on this release based on the ChangeLog:

• Modernized on-screen keyboard handling with the goal of removing caribou which has been archived upstream (cinnamon 6.8 in 2026 is the planned milestone target for caribou removal)
• Improve Wayland support
• Revamp the main menu display
• Switch to XApp symbolic icons 
• Wayland-compatible keyboard/IM handling
• Pause file operations in Nemo

Here's an early look of the future Cinnamon 6.6 (taken from LinuxMint Blog):

The final display may look differently in Slackware due to minimum customization on CSB project side, but you still have the basic idea. 

 Here's what XSI icons look like

Here's the default look on Slackware-Current:

If you are MATE users and having issues with MATE uses reverse scrolling (when you scroll down using the middle mouse wheel, it went up instead of down) and want to use the natural scrolling, here's a simple tip to solve the issue:

• Open /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/40-libinput.conf
• Add the following codes:
  

  Section "InputClass"
      Identifier "My Mouse"
      MatchIsPointer "on"
      Option "NaturalScrolling" "on"
  EndSection 

• Save and reboot

In the past, i remember there's an option in the control center > hardware > mouse to reverse this option, but in MATE 1.28, i think it's been removed. 

During Cinnamon 6.4 development process, i opened a ticket for cjs in order to support mozjs128 since Slackware-Current has switched from mozjs115 to mozjs128 and cjs wasn't able to built against it. Since there were no sign of changes at that time, i had to include mozjs115 in CSB project alongside with the existing mozjs128 in Slackware core packages. This was quite painful since it took a long time to compile this project and it was aging so more patches needed in order to build properly.

Today i got a notice from Clem that a new commit has been pushed to rebase cjs to support mozjs128 and i  cherry-picked that commits (1 and 2) into cjs today and i can say it worked nicely with what we have in Slackware, so i decided to push them forward. I rebuilt cinnamon and removed mozjs115 packages from CSB repository and pushed the binaries into slackware.uk repository as well.

Let me know if you found some regression due to this changes.

Yesterday i took some time to push the updates for my CSB project to the latest major release of Cinnamon 6.4 on top of latest Slackware Current. This is basically an incremental update so the upgrade process is quite smooth. Nothing major was introduced in this release, so i don't expect major issues with Cinnamon 6.4.

The only problem i had was the removal of mozjs115 from Slackware since they moved to newer mozjs128 and cjs still require that version (i opened an issue but no response yet from the developer). I guess they will update the mozjs in the next major release.

All the scripts has been uploaded to Github and Gitlab and binary packages for Slackware-Current has been uploaded to slackware.uk repository, thanks to Tadgy. The hosting facility had some networking issue when i wanted to upload yesterday, so i waited until today to post it, but it's back up now.

Here's the new look of Cinnamon 6.4 in the default configuration. Looks like they changed the default color to darker tone since 6.2.

Let me know if you encounter issues with Cinnamon project and Happy Thanksgiving

If you have just updated your Windows 11 machine recently and suddenly you found out that it broke your dual-boot setup, then most likely you were hit by another big regression by Microsoft. The error message that you might see when you boot your Linux will be something like this:

”Verifying shim SBAT data failed: Security Policy Violation. Something has gone seriously wrong: SBAT self-check failed: Security Policy Violation.”

• Must have expansion slots for memory and storage because i want to put maximum 32GB of DDR5 5600 MHz RAM and also i wanted different storage disk for Windows and my Slackware. Luckily this product came with 1TB of NVMe-based SSD, so i just need to add another NVMe for my Slackware setup.
• Generous of I/O ports. This product came with 1x 3.5mm Combo Audio Jack, 1x HDMI 2.1 FRL
  2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C support DisplayPort™ / power delivery / G-SYNC, 1x RJ45 LAN port, and 1x Type-C USB 4 support DisplayPort™.
• Must have RJ-45 jack. This is important for me as i still prefer wired connectivity over wireless for stability. Some products have removed this for the sake of weight and compact size
• I wanted recent processors with AI capabilities, so i'm aiming for Ryzen 9 8945H with 4GHz (24MB Cache, up to 5.2 GHz, 8 cores, 16 Threads); AMD XDNA™ NPU up to 16TOPS
• NVidia GPU. I'm not a gamer but having dedicated GPU is definitely better, so i picked NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 4060 Laptop GPU (233 AI TOPs), 1940MHz* at 140W (1890MHz Boost Clock+50MHz OC, 115W+25W Dynamic Boost), 8GB GDDR6. The AMD Radeon Graphics is also included as part of the Ryzen CPU.
  
• Good battery life. It came with 90WHrs, 4S1P, 4-cell Li-ion, which is very good compared to other products that i reviewed.
• Silent under heavy load. ASUS is doing a great job on handling the air flows of this product
• Must be durable for my line of work, and luckily it came with military grade certification MIL-STD-810H

This product came with Windows 11 Home installed, so when i got this product, i decided to setup it as soon as possible because in the past, i would need a whole day to setup for each platform (Windows and Linux), but surprisingly, i managed to do it in just few hours.

Once Windows is done, i took my time to prepare the latest Slackware-Current ISO from my local mirror setup at home because i'm using NVMe-based SSD along with newer Ryzen-based processors, so 15.0 might not be a good choice and since i'm already using -current on all my machines at home and workstation, i'm sure that it's a good choice and reduce my problems with newer hardware.

Well, turned out it paid well. The installation went smooth and it was finished in just few minutes and before rebooting, i managed to setup up GRUB instead of ELILO, but after rebooting, it went directly to boot Windows, so i noticed a problem there. It turned out that the GRUB installation was not handled correctly, so i booted again using Flash Drive and i choose boot existing OS and i chose Slackware Linux and from then i followed the same path as before

- Create a new initrd (i know it's no longer used since the generic kernel in -current had all the modules ready, but it's just old habbit and it should be safer, so i ran geninitrd to include all the required modules into initrd file)

- Install GRUB into proper location. The reason it failed during installation was probably because i didn't mount the proper EFI partition from my Windows system so the image wasn't installed properly and didn't overwrite Windows' boot manager. I used this command: grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi/EFI -v

- Update GRUB installation using update-grub script. 

With basic configuration done, i followed by installing sbopkg to install other packages that i need for daily work and i finished it under an hour or two.

One thing that i still haven't managed to setup is openrgb since my product is not yet listed on their website. It wasn't able to detect my chipset properly so it crashed when i tried to setup the keyboard backlighting, but i don't need that feature anyway. I was just curious about it and i also disabled the backlighting on my Windows setup as well to gain more battery life.

In general, this product works well for me and i'm super happy that Slackware also works fine with this without too much hassle and efforts. I also didn't encounter shutdown issue reported in LQ. If you are looking for a new laptop that works well with Slackware Linux or perhaps with any other Linux distribution (i never tested this yet but i'm sure you should have no issues if you are using recent kernel version), you might want to consider this product on your next wishlist.

Six months have gone by since i pushed Cinnamon 6.0 packages for Slackware-Current last year and here we are with a new Cinnamon 6.2 packages for Slackware-Current. As with previous releases, upstream never posted anything except for detailed commit logs in their github repository, so based on several sources who gathered information about this release, here are the main visible changes for this major release:

• Cinnamon sessions now have greeter badges
• Search bar shows by default when adding to Startup Applications
• New screen lock delay options: 5 & 10 seconds
• Workspace Switcher supports removing workspace with middle click
• Cinnamon Spices now support configurable keybindings
• Keybindings now searchable (in keyboard shortcuts editor)
• User applet supports showing user profile pic on panel
• Mint Menu gains a ‘Science’ category
• Cornerbar applet makes click actions configurable
• OSK picks up a toggle to disable the OSK
• Active VPN connections append padlock to network icons

Upstream also added a new project called GNOME Online Accounts GTK, but i haven't added this into CSB project for now as i'm still evaluating if this is a necessary package to include or not. It's just a GTK front end so if people do not really need this integration, i will skip it until they set it as mandatory.

As usual, the SlackBuild scripts has been pushed to our github/gitlab repository and binary packages has been uploaded to Slackware.UK (Thanks to Tadgy for providing this). Hopefully it will be included in AlienBOB's liveslack images next release. Last update was in January when Cinnamon 6.0 get included.

I have finished testing MATE 1.28 for Slackware 15.0 and current and packages for Slackware 15.0 is now available in the usual repository (Thanks to Tadgy for this space). There is no official announcement yet, but the sources have been around for few days, so i guess it's a good time to push the changes and packages to Slackware users. The code is now available in github and gitlab under a new branch: 15.0-mate-1.28. This branch should be used if you are using stable release (15.0) instead of current.

For current users, you need to use master branch as there has been some minor changes for now, mainly removal of 2 packages which are now included in Slackware main tree: libsoup3 and lxml. I will keep track of current changes in master branch only. There are no binary packages for current at this point due to this reason. When upstream pushes changes that only works on current, i will start building binary packages spesific for current users.

There hasn't been any major changes in this release, mainly just minor bug fixes, so don't expect big surprises. It's a small and continuous changes, which is good for stable releases of Slackware. I'm expecting that the next release should be targetted for next Slackware version (15.1).

Just for your information, Johannes Schoepfer also uploaded some of MATE components to SBo, so if you would like to build them from SBo repository, that should give the same results.

Cinnamon 6.0 tarballs has been released for some time and i didn't push the updates directly because normally it would take some time for upstream to stabilize the project with some minor releases before it's labeled as stable and the new version is announced. Well, it's not really the case for Cinnamon 6.0 where it has been stayed in 6.0.0 in most components for some time, so i decided to fire up my VM and started building it.

Surprisingly, it doesn't take that long to finish building all Cinnamon components this time. Slackware-Current has all the basic requirements except for some new packages that was introduced in this cycle: python3-webencodings, tinycss2 (replacing tinycss), and mint-l-icons as the new default icons theme. I have removed libcroco since upstream is archiving the project and everything is ok without libcroco. I also made some changes to the default schema for new user, which is defaulting the icon theme to Mint-L. One issue with the default icon theme is that it's lacking some default icons in the menu launcher, some of them are important icons, like cinnamon-control-center. With the new icon theme, it works nicely and it has more vibrant colors.

While the biggest thing about Cinnamon 6.0 is about Wayland support, which claimed to be working well in most cases, i haven't tried much during my test. Upstream is targeting for 2026 for complete Wayland transition from Xorg.

Binary packages are uploaded to Slackware.UK repository (credit goes to Tadgy) and SlackBuild scripts has been uploaded to github and gitlab.

Let me know if there's some issues with the build scripts. Until then, enjoy Cinnamon 6.0

If you are concerned about security vulnerabilities affecting your CPU like Spectre, ZenBleed, etc, you might want to add microcode provided by your CPU vendors, like Intel or AMD and also make sure to get the latest kernel that provided the support to mitigate the vulnerabilities.

Installing microcode alone is not enough as we still need to load it early during boot so it needs to be added into your loader, whether you use LILO, ELILO, or GRUB2. Since i'm using GRUB2, this is how you add them. I'm using Intel CPU so i need to install intel-microcode package from SlackBuilds first.

To generate the microcode cpio archive, use this following command:

iucode_tool -S --write-earlyfw=/boot/early_ucode.cpio /lib/firmware/intel-ucode/*

This command will try to seach for the correct signature based on your CPU. In my system, this will results in:

iucode_tool: system has processor(s) with signature 0x000806e9
iucode_tool: Writing selected microcodes to: /boot/early_ucode.cpio

GRUB_EARLY_INITRD_LINUX_CUSTOM="ucode.cpio"

Regenerate grub.cfg by running grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

You will notice that the newly cpio archive is included as well:

Found initrd image: /boot/early_ucode.cpio /boot/initrd.gz

It's been a while since i posted on this blog and last post was about Cinnamon 5.6.0 and now, it's time to jump to Cinnamon 5.8.0 packages for Slackware-Current. It's fresh from the oven and i believe there will be more minor releases to fix bugs that are found after the .0 release, but all the scripts are now pushed to github/gitlab repository and the binary packages have been uploaded to slackware.uk repository (Credit to Tadgy).

Looking at the changelog, i'm interested to add support for multi-touch gesture project called touchegg and Touché. It's not a mandatory requirements, but cinnamon-settings does have this support when the package is available. I will probably try to push it to SBo first before i add them into my CSB repository.

Three months since i posted Cinnamon 5.4 and here we are with Cinnamon 5.6 release for Slackware-Current. As usual, there is no release notes yet as this post is written, but based on the commit message per components, it seems that this release doesn't have major features compared to previous releases. Most of the changes are refinement to what 5.4 had offered and they want to polish the desktop even further.

I have pushed the changes for building Cinnamon 5.6 to master branch in github/gitlab repository and pushed the binaries into Slackware.UK repository (Thanks to Tadgy). As usual, i tested them using Slackware-Current as base, so i can't guarantee that it will work on Slackware 15.0. There will be more updates to the Cinnamon projects over few weeks before they are finalized.

Please give it a test and feedback on the build script.

I have been playing with Cinnamon 5.4 packages for some time and i think it's now ready since it has reached 5.4.10 and LinuxMint 21 has been released, meaning they have been finalized. One of the reason why i didn't publish it sooner is because i was experiencing crashes on my VBox tests, rapid changes in -Current, and lack of spare time to deal with this project due to my workload at the office.

There are 2 new packages introduced in this new major version: gsound and xdotools. I was trying to remove caribou, cogl, clutter, and clutter-gtk from this version, but it seems that some components still looking for them, so i added them back even though upstream have declared the project no longer maintained.

The new Cinnamon 5.4 comes with a new icon sets and also faster loading time to the desktop (if you are using runlevel 3). Remember that you need proper 3D acceleration in order to use Cinnamon. I tested it under VirtualBox and it worked smoothly. One small issue i found is missing the control center icon on the favorite.

Binaries have been pushed to the usual repository, thanks to Tadgy for providing this repository and the sources have been merged into master branch. Enjoy Cinnamon 5.4 packages on top of Slackware Current.

Some people have been asking about how to send patches to SBo when submission is still closed (usually during development cycle for next SBo repository or for a while after new repo is released). There are a few ways to do it:

1. Use a pull request on GitHub or merge request on GitLab
2. Send a patch using git format-patch to the mailing list

The first option has its own documentation, so please go look on the specific platform that you prefer. For  the second option, here's how to do it.

1. Make sure you clone the latest changes from master branch or if you haven't done it, use this command: 
   git clone git://git.slackbuilds.org/slackbuilds.git && cd slackbuilds
   
2. Make a new branch (eg. yourname)
   git checkout -B willysr
   
3. Make changes to your scripts and commit using this command:
   git commit -asm "category/script: Updated for version X.Y.Z"
   NOTE: 1 commit for each script!
   
4. Make a patch using git format-patch and save it to home directory (assuming it's willysr)
   git format-patch master.. > /home/willysr
   NOTE: double dot means from master to latest changes in your branch
   it will give you output like this: 0001-libraries-antlr4-Update-DEP.patch
   
5. Send those patches to the SBo mailing list or maintainer to be tested and merged