Cinnamon Clock Font Size Too Small

[atanere]

Me too... I need to practice what I preach!

But I'm retired now, and I have a little more time than I used to.

 

[YeahRight]

But I'm retired now, and I have a little more time than I used to.

I'm almost there, 2 more years

 

[atanere]

I'm almost there, 2 more years

Good luck! I hope you enjoy it as much as I do (so far). But I've only been retired a few months, so I don't think it has really settled in yet.

 

[wizardfromoz]

You folks are probably catching zzz's now, so I'll cast a wet blanket over something while you can't hit me.

No, it is not a good idea to delete

/home/yourusername/.cinnamon

... sorry Stan

... depending on whether you chose Delete or Move To Trash, if the latter it can be recovered. Also having a Timeshift snapshot would allow easy recovery, in minutes.

Yeah did not generate this folder himself, it comes with the install and is created after your first boot/reboot.

I can show this with my Tina, installed yesterday, and Yeah, this also shows some use for Terminal.

For my /dev/sdc15 . where I have my Tina, yours would likely show as /dev/sda1 or /dev/sda2 or similar.

These commands usually generate the same result (not always)

chris@TinaCinnamonSSD:~$ sudo tune2fs -l /dev/sdc15 | grep 'Filesystem created:'[sudo] password for chris:
Filesystem created: Thu Oct 10 12:22:10 2019

and

chris@TinaCinnamonSSD:~$ sudo dumpe2fs $(mount | grep 'on \/ ' | awk '{print $1}') | grep 'Filesystem created:'
dumpe2fs 1.44.1 (24-Mar-2018)
Filesystem created: Thu Oct 10 12:22:10 2019

... means I installed Tina my Thursday at lunchtime.

The .cinnamon folder is created either on your first boot, or shortly thereafter, perhaps with the first change you make.

The same applies with the other DEs (Desktop Environments) eg .mate for MATE, KDE, GNOME &c - some do it differently.

The .cinnamon folder will contain a minimum of 2 -3 subfolders either in the 1st session after install, or shortly thereafter, being

backgrounds
configs and perhaps
spices.cache (empty by default)

SCREENSHOT 1 - TINA DOT CINNAMON CONTENT - 1ST LEVEL

Inside those are files and perhaps more subfolders, and the files include .json files which contain settings, either default or as your changes make them.

If you make power settings changes, changes to panels, etc - it grows, so mine at 2nd level now looks like this

SCREENSHOT 2 - TINA DOT CINNAMON CONTENT -2ND LEVEL

None of these did I create - but they were created with my customising.

Here endeth the Post, next - a little more wet blanket

Wiz

 

[wizardfromoz]

More wet blanket, but a question first to the OP.

Hey Yeah, have you run your first Updates and Upgrades since installation, yet?

If yes, that's fine, and the changes Stan has instructed above will take effect, but their time limit is on a ticking clock, of how long the enlarged clock lasts.

I had a good idea this was the case, so I held off on the updating until I enlarged my clock by tweaking the Mint-Y-Dark theme in /usr/share/themes.

Tina was released in August, and the updates for kernels for Ubuntu and thus Linux Mint are being rolled out at 3 - 4 weekly intervals currently, so I expected a kernel update to be amongst the updates and I was not disappointed.

Below are screenshots of the before and after using the changes above to the Cascading Style Sheet /usr/share/themes/Mint-Y-Dark/cinnamon/cinnamon.css

and after

... better clock size?

BUT (Wizard's but is never far behind him)

... when you run the updates, the kernel is upgraded, and following a reboot, you have tiny clock back again, and the cinnamon.css no longer has the line we changed.

GOOD news is, since you tweaked that file, in /home/dude you will now have a folder

.themes

... and it is there we can copy and rename the Mint-Y-Dark theme, modify the cinnamon.css file and get a larger clock that will sustain all updates since it is in your Home folder.

I'll start work on the video.

Wizard out for my night

 

[atanere]

No, it is not a good idea to delete

/home/yourusername/.cinnamon

... sorry Stan

No, I am sorry! @YeahRight, I do humbly apologize! My mistake thinking you created that folder when I was trying to get you to create a .themes folder instead. I do not use Linux Mint right now, and the significance was lost on me.

GOOD news is, since you tweaked that file, in /home/dude you will now have a folder

.themes

... and it is there we can copy and rename the Mint-Y-Dark theme, modify the cinnamon.css file and get a larger clock that will sustain all updates since it is in your Home folder.

Well, heck! And now we are come full-circle back to the first set of instructions that I linked to! But no doubt Wizard's video will make setting up the custom theme in your home folder more clear than all the written instructions. Time for me to just kick back and enjoy the movie... I'll get popcorn!

Cheers

 

[YeahRight]

It's okay no biggie Ataere... My nephew came by and wanted to see how I installed Linux so I did a reinstallation. I didn't have much on the last installment so doing it over wasn't any big deal. After doing installment I came back to the site to see how to resize the clock post again and notice what you guys are saying. So that folder will not be deleted this time, thanks ...

 

[rado84]

There doesn't seem to be much one can do with regarding the small icons/ clock that really sucks. I don't get why one can't have the clock bigger or those close/expand icons but it is what it is. I guess the more I use Linux the easier it will be later on. Oh yeah, workspaces seem fun to use....

Go to /usr/share/[theme-name] where [theme-name] is the theme you're using. In my case it's Mint-Y ("stolen" from Mint to use it with Arch Linux). Once you enter the [theme-name] directory, open cinnamon.css and navigate your way to the line

.applet-label

There you'll see line:

font-size: YYpx;

where YY is a number. Also it's possible the size to be in "em" instead of pixels. So change that line to something familliar. For instance, for my custom theme I've entered

font-size: 24px;

and the whole thing looks like this:

.applet-label {  /* TEXT LABEL SUCH AS CALENDAR AND TEMPERATURE */
  font-weight: bold;
  font-size: 24px;
  color: #f0f0f0; }

Which in terms of visual style looks like this (see the clock font size):

 

[YeahRight]

Thanks for that rado84 but if Atanere didn't show me how to get to /usr/share/(theme-name ) where ( theme-name) and so on your guide wouldn't make any sense to me since because I didn't know how to go to or where it is at /usr/share/(theme-name )

 

[wizardfromoz]

No offence Rado, but you are muddying the waters, a little.

In Linux Mint, the hierarchy is

/usr/share/themes/Mint-Y-Dark

Also the line on font-size is not in there by default, we have to put it in there.

However, that will not sustain a kernel upgrade, hence we will be going into /home/user/.themes and doing it there, where it will always work.

See the vid tomorrow, and thanks for contributing

Wizard

 

[rado84]

However, that will not sustain a kernel upgrade

That's not true. I made my own theme in kernel 4.13 (Mint 18.3), then I switched to Arch where everything is the latest (right now the kernel is 5.3.5) and I'm still using the same theme, I only changed the name of the theme for Arch in order to avoid confusion.

 

[wizardfromoz]

Thanks heaps Rado, you are right on one count

That's not true.

... about the kernel upgrade, my bad.

The culprit was in fact the package mint-themes.

I verified this once I Timeshifted back to before when I applied the updates.

Mint Update Manager looked a bit like this.

What some of The Viewers may not know with Mint Update is that you can drag the handles and Choose View - VisibleColumns , to add Old Version, so

The order of the columns changes, but it means that, in Linux Mint Cinnamon, if you run the update and mint-themes changes from v1.8.1 to 1.8.2 - your changes to /usr/share/themes/cinnamon/cinnamon.css

... will come undone.

Yours may not be affected because, as you have said

In my case it's Mint-Y ("stolen" from Mint to use it with Arch Linux)

You've also said

I made my own theme in kernel 4.13 (Mint 18.3), then I switched to Arch

(my highlighting)

The changes to Mint which cause the clock issues came in with versions 19.1 Tessa and 19.2 Tina.

The 18 series (Sara, Serena, Sonya, and Sylvia) and 19.0 (Tara) are unaffected by this, so they would have the line in cinnamon.css that is missing in subsequent versions.

Hope this explains everything, and so, /home/dude is the best place for @YeahRight to have these changes (as Stan advocated all along)

Back tomorrow with the video.

Wizard out

 

[rado84]

if you run the update and mint-themes changes from v1.8.1 to 1.8.2 - your changes to /usr/share/themes/cinnamon/cinnamon.css

That's why after I made my theme, I copied it to ~/.themes and I put it there every time I have to reinstall. Thus it remains unchanged by any updates.
Or, you can go with the more harsh way - add the themes package to the ignore list so that it's never updated.

 

[wizardfromoz]

Hey Stan, break out the popcorn, the vid's here

It's a little longer than I'd like but I hope it covers everything.

Cheers all

Wiz