cinnamon requires xserver-xorg-video-ati

[Ed Novak]

cinnamon, to start via a dislpay manager (gdm, mdm, etc) requires the package xserver-xorg-video-radeon. This holds true on my machine with a radeon hd 4650. The package dependency is not in apt / aptitude.

If xserver-xorg-video-radeon is not installed and the display manager attempts to start a cinnamon session, cinnamon will crash and you will fall back to a different session (for me: gnome classic). There will be something about an exit code in syslog and my /var/log/Xorg.0.log was full of errors.

Once the packge is installed all is right and cinnamon starts up just fine.

When the package is not installed, you can log into gnome-classic (or something) and run cinnamon --replace which will work but will feel choppy / not smooth.

I'm running linux mint 13 (Maya) 32 bit cinnamon

Here is the error some people can find it on google easier!

gnomesession 'cinnamon' exited with error status 1