With the 2.7.x release, Caffeine stopped using an Ubuntu AppIndicator, a feature that many considered essential, resulting in various forks being developed. 

Well, there's no need for that any more because the latest Caffeine 2.8, released today, brings back the Ubuntu AppIndicator, which allows to inhibit the desktop idleness manually. You can continue to use Caffeine without an indicator: simply launch "Caffeine" from the menu / Dash. If you want to use the indicator, launch "Caffeine Indicator" instead:

The latest Caffeine version (2.7.x), released back in May, no longer comes with an Ubuntu AppIndicator so you can't manually toggle it on/off any more, feature which was considered pretty important by many of its users. If you're one of them, you can now use Caffeine Plus, a Caffeine 2.7 fork which restores the Ubuntu AppIndicator icon, allowing you to manually toggle it on/off.

Cinnamon is a GNOME Shell fork which tries to offer the layout and customizability of GNOME 2: by default there's a panel at the bottom (but optionally, you can also get one on top like in GNOME 2) that supports autohide, it supports applets, a classic system tray and more.

Let's take a look at what's new in the latest Cinnamon 1.8!

Like we were telling you a while back, Linux Mint 15 will get a new screensaver, among other cool new features and changes.

The work on the new Cinnamon screensaver has started and the code is available on GitHub:

The screensaver / lock screen isn't temporarily disabled when playing videos in some applications or in a web browser which can be very annoying, so here are two ways to inhibit the screensaver while watching videos.

Electric Sheep is a really cool screensaver which communicates with other computers that use the screensaver to generate complex fractal animations.

By default, Electric Sheep doesn't show up in Xscreensaver preferences / screensavers list, so here's how to solve this issue.

There isn't much info about customizing the lock screen appearance for GNOME 2 so WebUpd8 reader Oleg has sent us a tip on how to change the GNOME screensaver unlock dialog background.

If you had trouble installing the Noflipqlo screensaver or simply didn't want to go through so many steps to install a screensaver, you can try QMLSaver. It's not exactly the same thing, but the animation is still pretty nice as you can see in the video below:

WebUdp8 reader bhm brought Fliqlo, a very popular screensaver for Windows and OSX to Linux. Fliqlo allows you to make your screen look like a flip-style clock.

What doesn't work: Noflipqlo currently doesn't work with Gnome Screensaver so you'll have to use Xscreensaver. Also, the "flip" effect doesn't work (hence the name - Noflipqlo).

To install Fliqlo in Linux (called "Noflipqlo"), use the following commands (note: the commands below will disable the Gnome Screensaver):

Caffeine is a Gnome applet which basically prevents your computer's screensaver and power saving to activate. The applet works simple but effective: a coffee-cup will be displayed and when you click it, the coffee-cup fills up and keeps your computer from going to sleep.