Posting an update:
I have made several experiments, including installing LInux Mint Mate 18.2 on real hardware and installing the cinnamon desktop on top of it. Certainly, cinnamon doesn't run in software rendering mode on real hardware. It runs pretty much well excepting some little problems that have nothing to do with this.
Here's the list of things I have tried:
For the sake of doing a better test I started again from scratch.
I made more tests:
This time using Linux Mint Cinnamon 18.1
Live session ran with the "fall back to software rendering mode" error message.
As expected, after installing the virtual machine it was still like that.
ran
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sudo apt-get remove virtualbox-guest-utils
The three packages were removed.
Rebooted.
Surprise! resolution is still high!
I went to the devices menu and selected "Insert Guest Additions CD image"
The cd prompted to be executed. Ignored. went to the terminal and executed sudo ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run
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You appear to have a version of the VBoxGuestAdditions software on your system which was installed from a different source or using a different type of installer
dumb message since after checking at synaptics package manager everything was uninstalled.
Really, this message happens in all cases! There should be something left for the installer to detect it.
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Do you wish to continue anyway? [yes or no]
typed Y and pressed enter.
everything seemed fine.
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vboxadd.sh Starting the VirtualBox Guest Additions
Reboot.
Everything seems fine, no errors.
So, now let's do the same with Linux Mint Mate again from scratch.
I did things the other way around: made a 17.3 Cinnamon machine and installed mate on top.
after installing the virtual machine clicked on the updates button in the panel.
began updating everything.
Finished updating. Restart.
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sudo apt-get remove virtualbox-guest-utils
The three packages were removed.
Rebooted.
Installed the Guest additions from CD.
Result? Everything is running fine! I can switch desktops without trouble!
However everything changed when on top of that I installed Cairo-dock.
Cinnamon doesn't get the rendering mode error but Cairo Dock renders black!
The whole dock is a black thing!
Here's a screenshot:
https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipP ... h3aFpXejBn
Who knows if this works fine with former versions of VirtualBox, All I know is that it fais with
VirtualBox-5.1.22-115126.
Clearly the guest additions have bugs that only appear in certain conditions, for example when you install another desktop environment.
However, I think my tests show that it's possible to have both Cinnamon and Mate together without much hiccups.
Now it seems you just released a new virtualbox version... I don't know when I will have time to retry this test.