Any chance of a Ubuntu MATE remix coming out?

**craig10x** · August 3rd, 2013

I find Unity to be a more fluid and easier to use then gnome shell and a very sane environment indeed

**vasa1** · August 3rd, 2013

Originally Posted by mikodo

... How would this look, on Discourse?

Excellent idea. Very few posts there today.

**ZoiaGuyver** · August 3rd, 2013

I don't think there would be an "official" version of it, but a community spin off would prob be about the next best thing.

**2Stoned** · August 31st, 2013

https://www.ramon-c.nl/ubuntu-mate/

**jivabill** · August 31st, 2013

Well, I disliked the Unity desktop so much that I just departed Ubuntu. Changed all 4 my machines, two desktops, two laptops over to Mint !3 Maya with the Mate desktop. Love it, suits me fine. And the LTS is good till 2017. Cool. I don't want to be changing my interface at the whim of the supplier, I want to get my work done using tools I am familar with. So, Mint provided a very nice solution.
bill

**TeamRocket1233c** · September 5th, 2013

You could try doing a netinstall, leaving it as a base command-line install, although if you go that route, you would have to go into recovery mode, run fsck in order to go into read/write mode while booted into recovery mode, then once that's done, go into a root prompt, type in nano /etc/sudoers, and then where it has the users who have sudo rights listed, type in user ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL, substituting "user" with your main user account name, and then pressing ctrl-X+Y+enter to save the changes, and then type in passwd root and whatever password you wanna use for your root password in order to be able to log in as root, and then type in exit and select resume normal boot from the recovery mode options menu, and you should be booting into a system that has full sudo and root access, then from there. login as root, and once you're logged in, type in nano /etc/apt/sources.list, and type in deb http://repo.mate-desktop.org/ubuntu raring main or deb http://repo.mate-desktop.org/ubuntu precise main depending on whether you have 12.04 LTS or 13.04, and then press ctrl-X+Y+enter to save the changes, and then type in apt-get update && apt-get install cups xorg mate-archive-keyring && apt-get update && apt-get install mate-core mate-desktop-environment human-theme community-themes light-themes, and then once that's done, type in startx, open up a terminal, and type in apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras, and you're all set.

**buzzingrobot** · September 5th, 2013

There are several how-to posts in the forums at mate-desktop.org that explain how to install a so-called "pure" Mate on a minimal Ubuntu, like TeamRocket illustrates.

I've done it with a mini.iso install. (The mini.iso and the netinstall image are pretty much the same. It's the Debian installer slightly tweaked.) At one point in the install process you are asked to select from a list of software sets. While it is not explicity explained, if you select *none* of the offerings, a basic command line system will be installed. At that point, you can reboot into it and add the Mate repos and do the install.

Caveats :

1. You may need/want a wired ethernet link until Mate is running unless you are adept at configuring wireless manually. In fact, i can't recall if the mini/netinstall found my wireless link.

2. You'll need to make sure you install a Display Manager, whether that's LightDM or something else.

3. I do not know if the Ubuntu font packages and patches are installed with that minimal installation. Mate might pull them in as dependencies, perhaps. Out of the box, Mate is not configured for nice looking fonts. Just the opposite, actually.

4. If/when you install a major app from the Ubuntu repos, there is a very good chance it will drag along chunks of Unity, etc. So, if you've gone to all this trouble to keep every last bit Unity off your machine, you'll be annoyed.

I did that kind of install out of curiousity. But, I don't see any real advantage. Mate on a standard Ubuntu install works very well. I think it's especially nice on 13.04.