GNOME Classic was originally intended to be a replacement of GNOME 2 after the release of GNOME 3. In addition, it also served as a lightweight replacement of GNOME 3 in older hardware which couldn't afford the graphical effects. However, the classic mode started gaining weight after each release and now it has reached a point were it is hardly usable. I tried with GNOME Classic in Fedora 21 and it's really a beast which is very difficult to tame. The settings app doesn't seems to work; couldn't add input methods; Files (Nautilus) came up as an intruder; too many clicks to open an application.
There were too many issues, so I tried various other Desktop Environments such as LXDE, MATE and Cinnamon.Out of these, Cinnamon doesn't have an official fedora spin so far. An unofficial spin maintained by Dan Book is maintained here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Cinnamon_Spin. Hope we will have an official Fedora Cinnamon spin soon.
Meanwhile, for someone who likes to have a clean install of Cinnamon on existing Fedora 21 Workstation, here are the steps:
Step 1:
Boot the machine and switch to a text console and login as root. Do not login to GNOME desktop. You can get a text console by pressing Alt+F2.
Step 2:
Remove packages related to GNOME. LightDM seems to be better than gdm for Cinnamon, so it's better to remove gdm.
Install Cinnamon Desktop Group using yum
There were too many issues, so I tried various other Desktop Environments such as LXDE, MATE and Cinnamon.Out of these, Cinnamon doesn't have an official fedora spin so far. An unofficial spin maintained by Dan Book is maintained here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Cinnamon_Spin. Hope we will have an official Fedora Cinnamon spin soon.
Meanwhile, for someone who likes to have a clean install of Cinnamon on existing Fedora 21 Workstation, here are the steps:
Step 1:
Boot the machine and switch to a text console and login as root. Do not login to GNOME desktop. You can get a text console by pressing Alt+F2.
Step 2:
Remove packages related to GNOME. LightDM seems to be better than gdm for Cinnamon, so it's better to remove gdm.
# yum remove gnome*Step 3:
# yum remove gdm
Install Cinnamon Desktop Group using yum
# yum group install @cinnamon-desktopOnce yum is completed, you can reboot the machine and login using Cinnamon Desktop. You might need to install RhythmBox and Gnote if required.
