Mint is no different than any other Linux distribution in that it allows you to customize your experience however you want. The default Cinnamon Mints desktop environment, to the extent that it has one, has some of the most versatile options available. Let’s go over some of the ways you can customize Linux Mint Cinnamon.

Where to find Cinnamon desktop layout settings

Cinnamon lets you radically change what you see on your desktop with just a few clicks. You access these features through the menu, which you open by clicking the Mint icon in the lower right corner of the screen and then navigating to Preferences and then finding System Settings.

You can also just type whatever you need into the search bar at the top, which I prefer as it’s much faster. Either way, you’ll get to system settings and find everything you need at the top under Appearance.

Well, let’s go through all of these in turn, although note that you can also access each one directly by typing their name into the search function in the menus.

Choose a new background

First is changing the desktop background, which you may also know as wallpaper. You can do this either through the menu or by right-clicking anywhere on the desktop and selecting Change Desktop Background.

Anyway, you get to the background menu. Linux Mint comes with a lot of wallpapers to choose from, both standard and included in different versions (names of the girls in my screenshot below).

You can also add your own. The default only takes from the main images folder, so if you keep your wallpapers somewhere else, you need to change it. Click the plus symbol at the bottom of the screen, then navigate to the folder you want to add.

Any image you want as your background, just click on it and it will become your background image. It should change almost immediately.

Choose New Animations with Effects

Next is the Effects screen, which lets you change the animated effects around opening and closing menus, dialog boxes, and windows. You can turn each of these on or off and change the effect you see.

I recommend messing around with these settings until you find the ones you like. In particular, the style drop-down box gives you a lot of options. You can fade effects in or out, or even switch between effects completely.

Note that you can also modify all these features in a more detailed way through the Personalization window at the top of the screen. You can determine how long the effects last and further specify the type of effect displayed.

You can have fun experimenting if you are bored too.

Choose a Snazzy font

You can also change fonts in Linux Mint using the font selection screen.

Mint allows different fonts in different places and lets you change them to your heart’s content, which is great. I stick to the defaults (for a writer, surprisingly, I’m not very picky about fonts), but there are hundreds of options to choose from.

The bottom half of the screen also has some options for when you have trouble reading the screen. You can change the size of the letters by changing the text scaling factor and improve readability by trying different options under the headings headings and antialiasing. These last two can help if the letters look blurry common problem when running Mint on older machines.

Change the whole theme

In the Themes screen you can change the appearance of the desktop as a whole, as well as window borders, icons and the mouse pointer, among others.

I was surprised by the amount of options for everything, with multiple themes for each setting, the icons alone have dozens of options. I also like how you can not only change the overall theme, but even the buttons on Windows.

If you ever want even more themes, you can click the Add/Remove button at the top of the screen to find themes created by the community.

The Settings menu mainly controls how the scrollbar behaves, as well as allowing you to set the appearance of the buttons on certain menus.

Be productive with Desklets

You can also add desks to your desktop. These are small widgets that give you an overview of what a program is doing, or maybe add some convenience like a clock. You access them through the Desklet program, either through the menu or by right-clicking anywhere on the desktop.

Currently, there are only three default desktops you can install, but you can download dozens more. There are some that can monitor system statistics, plugins for popular apps like Google Calendar, to a desk that gives you a random Persian poem every day.

Desklets are great if you want information at a glance on your desktop, although I have to say that the experience depends a lot on the individual desklet. The good ones work very well, the not-so-good ones are much less useful. If you like the idea of ​​desklets, I recommend experimenting to find the ones you like.

Add and remove desktop icons

You can also add, remove and rearrange desktop icons. To do this, right-click anywhere on the desktop and choose Personalize.

The first screen you see will allow you to change how the default icons are displayed. You can sort them both horizontally and vertically, change their order, things like that.

At the bottom of the screen, you can click Desktop Settings and change the icons displayed.

These settings are nice because they give you a choice between a blank desktop or one that lets you control things without submenus. However, you can change all of this to your heart’s content.

Linux Mint is a very malleable distribution and the Cinnamon desktop makes it very easy to customize your desktop environment with just a few clicks. If there’s something on your desktop that you want to be a little different, it’s easy to change it. I also like it as a way to kill some time because there are so many things to experience.