I have been using Mint17 Mate successfully on my old Toshiba Satellite 215 for a few days. Linux has made this 8 or so year old laptop new again. It is almost startling-only I had read of the possibility which is what got me going
I went to a search to find a Linux Tips: 10, 11, 20 things to do after installing Mint and found one that suggested adding Mate to Cinnamon with an apt-get install meta cinnamon type command. This is not any dual boot-I have that with Vista: this is only another option on that first boot choice page.
I was in Mate but tried to use the same process but add cinnamon to mate rather than mate to cinnamon
It appeared successful , went through the download and all the activity in the terminal window only thing is that Cinnamon doesn't appear in the option menu that follows boot. i get the standard Mate, recovery, memtest and the windows boot vista in this case , but no cinnamon.
I see that cinnamon is downloaded extracted or whatever it did
Now,I just cant find any options for the suggested scenario failing. I do not know what i should do,
if I didnt put the cinnamon folders in the proper places, I had no idea where they should go nor did the tip or hint page say.
I am so new with Mint/Linux I am unable to guess,
I would appreciate any hint or info as to whether I was ok just altering the process of Mate to Cinnamon
or if there is some way I can make this happen.
I can see in the Prefs I had the option to make Cinnamon the default boot choice but selecting it makes no change on the boot menu at start up. I think that option in the preferences applies to no start situations. there is the xsomehting, Mate and now Cinnamon as choices. Only it doesnt happen.
thanks
John

well, well well....

you sound like someone who knows nothing of motorbike mechanics, but heard of this wonderful extra cylinder you can just screw onto the engine - so you buy it, then you go and loosen all the screws you can find on the engine and throw them in a big bucket - and only then it occurs to you that you have no clue whatsoever how to make it all work...

so called "user-friendly" linux distributions have one thing in common with windows: don't attempt to change the default setup. things can break badly.

i suggest you find out what a "desktop environment" is, and then accept my advice: it is not a good idea to install a complete desktop environment together with another complete desktop environment. i, too, had to learn it the hard way.

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Thanks for the reply, and wiki link. I had read it already. I didnt break anything. all works just fine. i just figured someone else must have followed the linux 'To Do After...' pages. I saw that there could be an option to try both, so, why not give it a try , side by side, as they put it without doing a total installation of another version.
The whole linux on an 8 year old laptop was just an experiment to see what, exactly, would work in this old thing and what wouldnt.
I have kept it fairly simple, this is the only lapse, and I agree that it was going out on a limb in a way. I read that it is no good to mix the environments, not to 'pollute' or 'muddy the waters' as one Linux tout advised. I do not recall all the names but I get most of my information from the Mint forum, and here, linux questions or the Linux -Mint community. Some comes from the Ubuntu forum or pages.
I was hoping that there were a way or step I might have missed . I would provide the web site if i remembered it. I have it on one of my computers bookmarked. But, I have been researching Linux , Ubuntu and Mint in particular for a month or so and made the live CD and USB versions to try them all out prior to installing.
I am sold on the kernel as a working environment, it allows this old laptop to do basic duty with alacrity and verve. That is a good thing
Whether I can get cinnamon and mate to be offered as options in the dual boot menu is academic. I tried and failed to make it happen and it is fairly routine to just remove the download, no harm done. It would have been interesting to be able to compare those 2 most popular versions as the author suggested. I did already try cinnamon, ubuntu, and 3others in an all in one live cd.
I thank you for your response mechanics analogy or not-or simile- By the way the location I found the added session option for Cinnamon is:
http://www.binarytides.com/better-li...t-17-cinnamon/
John

They (Cinnamon and Mate) are not going to be offered on the grub menu, or boot menu. The operating system you have chosen is Linuxmint. Mate or Cinnamon are merely DEs or Desktop Environments. If your computer has only one operating system (Linuxmint) it will probably boot into that without pausing for you to choose which Desktop environment you want to use. They are both there, but you have to choose, and that choice is usually made at the beginning of the boot process.

If you can boot into Mate (or Cinnamon), go to the menu, and choose "control center".
Then choose "Login Window", then "Auto Login", and finally uncheck "enable auto matic Login" And check to be sure that you are allowing sufficient time under "Enable Timed Login".

That should do it. on your next boot you can choose which Desktop Environment you want to use.

There are other ways to do that job, and if I have misunderstood your precise problem, you may need to make further inquiry. I recently wanted to try out a different desktop environment and had to go into the terminal mode to get back to something familiar enough for me to use.

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Thanks for that info. I do have a dual boot set up so the grub , i guess it is,menu shows up and I gave it a 10second auto log in for the default environment. I did go to the place you suggest and surely enough, Cinnamon does appear there as an option along with Mate and 2 other things-4total. I did select the cinnamon and rebooted 2x with cinnamon selected as the option but it did not show up in the grub menu. I am missing something, not a big deal, i guess. everything works just fine. I am just learning about this , learning the lingo, jargon,whatever and the syntax for commands in the terminal. It is all fun and productive...and free.
I do appreciate your suggestions, you didnt misunderstand, I dont think, and verified that I did one thing right in going to the 'control center' I think you probably hit my error on the head. I dont think I unchecked the 'enable auto log in" and I know i added time to the timed log in. This is the area I believe my trouble is
Thanks a lot. I will be more careful with those checks. I was nervous I might lock myself out somehow trying to do something I really dont need to be doing. I already test drove Cinnamon on a live cd i made. I get in trouble all the time failing to leave well enough alone
John

you are confusing "bootloader" and "login manager"
- the bootloader is GRUB and it's (almost) the first thing that gets loaded after you switch on the machine. it lets you choose which operating system you boot into (windows, different linux distros...).
after you choose, it starts booting the operating system, first the non-graphical part. when it's done with that, you usually come to the so-called "login " or "display manager" - that is where you choose the desktop environment.

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Thank's again for keeping me informed. I am just learning the terms for each thing and operation. I just forget which is which, you are correct. Makes it difficult for someone to figure out what I am asking, I guess
But, you are right. I had auto log in checked so I bypassed that next screen, log in screen. It did come back when i 'logged out' rather than restart once. I got frantic, I had never seen it before. Easy enough to figure out though. But I am about to do what 'littlejoe..' suggested as well.
I just now unchecked that auto log in and left timed log in. maybe that is it? I do have cinnamon as the option for default, there is the X...something, the Mate, Cinnamon and Cinnamon(software render_)forget if it is render or rendering. but those 4 options are there in the login window pref, options and i checked off the pref to enable defult session for some reason.
I am still getting used to this old laptop working, and working with some life, alacrity almost. it just zips along when just a day and a half ago i had to wait 2.5 hrs just to make a partition with mini tool in windows vista. I probably should have done it in the Linux live installer gParted. but didnt know how to work the thing and i do use the freeware mini tool partition wizard all the time on my other computer builds swapping hard drives around . this is my first Linux major experiment. i used a dual boot on a desktop computer i have as well at the same time but that is totally different. on an external eSATA hard drive and there are 4 other internal drives, this laptop had just the one small internal drive -though i thought about using that external esata for the laptop first, didnt. need to experiment with this as i am
So, I thank you for your patience and perspicacity while interpreting my questions and providing good insights.
thanks again
John
I thank you for straightening me out on the boot/log in. I had been bypassing the log in screen due to not unchecking the auto log in.
I still was not successful, though, from the log in screen and choosing Cinnamon. It just reverted to Mate, i unchecked the 'log in to last user...'or whatever the exact words are, and still cinnamon wouldnt come up
I was wondering if maybe my troubles begin earlier in the process : not extracting to proper folders, locations or something. I just noticed that I had some things in "Downloads" folder and extracted there . I am not familiar ,yet, with the download/extract process and probably didnt select a proper location when given the opportunity. I wouldnt have known where to direct the extracted folder anyway, but I would have looked it up sooner.
Thanks for your suggestions, really appreciate them. I was able to move farther along in the process of tracking down my mistakes. I like learning about it anyway and reading in advance of things I had not experienced before generally get forgotten or lost in a heap of notes I misplace
John

Thanks to 'everyone' who helped to point me in the proper direction. was able to work it out well despite not knowing all the names of the screens or methods to get there. I , also, found I needed to log out completely, not just 'switch user' as I had done unwittingly, but only twice, and fully logged out to find it working as expected.
It is very interesting to be able to keep much of the important settings while changing the look/ desktop environment. Makes sense now. I only need one and it will be easy to select one and remove the other according to the method i used to install it.i hope.
John