As we already anticipated at the end of January, more specifically did my partner Diego, Ubuntu Cinnamon It is already officially an official flavor of Ubuntu, worth the redundancy. Two months ago they had already welcomed him, but semi-internally. At that time, neither the project leader nor any of his collaborators said anything by any means, and they have waited until this week to break the news, which makes sense.
The Ubuntu Unity leader did much the same. If my memory serves me correctly, Sudra did say something as soon as he found out, but the official statement came just days away from launching the Kinetic Kudu family beta. Lunar Lobster will arrive on April 20, and in a few days, in fact they are already uploading images and doing the pertinent tests, it will be possible to test the Ubuntu 23.04 beta, at which time Ubuntu Cinnamon, now 100% complete, will be a official flavor. The difference between that moment and the announcement of his arrival, like two months ago with the less public message, is that his beta is already It will appear in the Ubuntu cdimage.
Ubuntu Cinnamon had been as "Remix" for 4 years
almost 4 years ago since Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix began to take its first steps. I remember that after the summer of 2019 I found something on Twitter about Ubuntu Cinnamon, and I took a walk through its entire Timeline to find out everything well. That was it, a new "Remix", the tagline that all Ubuntu-based distributions that want to become part of the official team carry. I remember it well, because something also happened that I didn't like at all: that post was copied, translated and pasted in a Brazilian media (greetings if you read me), and Joshua Peisach congratulated them and thanked them for spreading it. Then I was accused of plagiarism, because a delay in publication on networks made it appear that my article had been the one that was plagiarized.
It is not bad to base/be inspired by the information of others, but the copy/paste, if it is not from official sources, is to make them look at it. It is one thing to find out about a piece of news through another means and go to the official source, and the other is to make yours the content created by another without citing sources.
But that is part of the past, and there it should remain. The present is that Ubuntu Cinnamon has managed to be part of the official team. It was the first to appear from a list, let's say, medium in which Ubuntu Unity was also included and there are Ubuntu Web, UbuntuEd (the three previous ones from the same developer), UbuntuDDE and Ubuntu Sway, I don't know if I missed any. In addition, a resurrection is expected, that of Edubuntu that could return from the hand of the leader of the Ubuntu Studio project and his wife, who would be the official leader, or at least in the offices.
Competition for Linux Mint?
About the flavor itself, you have to know that the relationship between Ubuntu Cinnamon, Ubuntu and Cinnamon will be similar to that of Kubuntu, Ubuntu and KDE neon. KDE neon is based on Ubuntu, but the desktop is created by KDE and uploaded first to the operating system it controls the most. Kubuntu is also from KDE, but is under the Canonical umbrella, and doesn't update Plasma until they change versions, unless their Backports repository is added. In a similar way, Ubuntu Cinnamon is now part of Ubuntu, but it hasn't come to compete directly with Linux Mint, also based on Ubuntu. The main flavor of "mint" linux is Cinnamon, and it has every preference. Also, Linux Mint is not required to do anything Canonical says, and in fact undoes many of the controversial changes that Mark Shuttleworth's company forces it to introduce.
As for deadlines, Ubuntu comes out in April and October, and Linux Mint around June and December. The new versions of Mint include a new version of Cinnamon, while the official Canonical flavor comes with a Cinamon that was released 4-5 months earlier.
Personally, and although I welcome Ubuntu Cinnamon, I think I will never use it. If I use Ubuntu, I go for the main edition (GNOME) or Kubuntu, and if I want Cinnamon + Ubuntu, Linux Mint appeals to me more. Now, if Canonical has decided to accept a new component in the family, it is because it meets its quality requirements, which is another way of saying that Ubuntu Cinnamon has a great company behind it. As is always said in these cases, in the end the decision is ours.