Desktop Environment Switch (Cinnamon > Gnome)

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1

I’m considering switching my laptop DE from Cinnamon to Gnome - I know that switching DEs can be messy between KDE and Gnome and it’s generally better to clean install but, with Cinnamon being heavily reliant on GTK anyway, this feels like a bit of a different beast.

Has anyone tried this and have any gotchas to look out for?

I’m currently trying to work out whether I’m best going for an update using the instructions on the Wiki here: Install Desktop Environments - Manjaro or trying a fresh install.

2

Make a backup and then do it?

I can see this working out OK, if with some minor leftover cruft in some corners.

By the way … mapare could be abused for this purpose, and would appear to provide a more full package list.

First to install all needed packages:

bash <(curl -s https://gitlab.com/cscs/mapare/-/raw/main/mapare) -IA

(and input your desired desktop at the prompt)

Then to create a list of non-default packages

bash <(curl -s https://gitlab.com/cscs/mapare/-/raw/main/mapare) -X | tee mapareout.txt

(and input your new DE)

Now you will probably want to open up that file (mapareout.txt) and delete any lines with packages you want to keep - probably mostly AUR or other extra programs you have added.

Then you can uninstall everything on the list using the following:

grep -Ev '^ |^$' mapareout.txt | sudo pacman -Rns -

And that should cover most things except what is in your $HOME directory.
Any ~/.config/* or ~/.local/* or ~/.cache/* or similar directories from any previously installed packages will not have been automatically removed.

You may opt to try cleaning it yourself, maybe even consider comparing to the skel (default for new users) files at /etc/skel OR just create a new user, maybe moving any important files over to the new user account (and $HOME).

PS

I suppose I should make clear…

A clean install is always going to be clean.
If theres no particular reason to go about it another way then this is going to be the steadfastly reliable approach.

3

I’ve given it a basic shot just installing the gnome packages as per the article and swapping out the manjaro cinnamon package for the gnome one and it’s looking pretty solid - I had to remove some user profile customisations to gtk 4 but, other than that it seems to be behaving nicely.

I now have to remove a load of unnecessary duplicated apps which will be a minor pain in the short term, but less than getting it set up on a fresh install.

I guess with Cinnamon being based off an earlier Gnome there’s a lot less conflict than with KDE (I tried a KDE / Gnome switch before and quickly reformatted and went clean that time).

Typically I’d just hit the button after I saw the comments on mapare - Doing this first could have made my next steps a bit less painful but it’s all working, so I’m just in tidy up phase anyway.