Any chance of a Ubuntu MATE remix coming out?

[operatingsystem121]

I am familiar with Ubuntu and Linux in general (to a certain degree), I, like many other experienced users do not like Unity and I personally like the MATE project because I am familiar with GNOME2 ( IDon't even like Gnome classic), so my question is, will an official ( community based mate remix come out?, I can do part of that project
Thanks

[carl4926]

You know Mint do a Mate? It's basically Ubuntu under the hood

[sudodus]

You know Mint do a Mate? It's basically Ubuntu under the hood
+1

And have you tried the new 13.04 Ubuntu GNOME flavour

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuGNOME

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-gnome/releases/13.04/release/

[goldshirt9]

just install mate desktop, best of both worlds

[operatingsystem121]

Don't like gnome shell, mint is good, but I want a look and feel like gnome 2 based Ubuntu versions by using the mate desktop

[stalkingwolf]

all the bells and whistles i like are in the mate DE. so i install it on anything i install.

[prodigy_]

You know Mint do a Mate?
I still don't like how Mint tries to hijack search in web browsers. But it's quite easy to fix. And now that Debian adopted Gnome 3, Mint is indeed the lesser evil.

[monkeybrain2012]

Don't think so, as it is a dead DE, with no future, just like kde3.

[deadflowr]

I'd be surprised if there aren't 20 mate based ubuntus out there already.

But then again, mate seems to be the kind of desktop that if you were so desperate to run, you probably just build it yourself.

[iamkuriouspurpleoranj]

A mahtay of mine hahtays MATE and says it looks out of dahtay. Hahtayerz gonna hahtay.

[buzzingrobot]

Don't think so, as it is a dead DE, with no future, just like kde3.

Software isn't dead until it stops wotking, and that doesn't happen often. If MATE successfully ports to gtk3, it will be used for a long time, whether or not it is actively developed.

Remember that all DE's are essentially the same: You click on something and something happens. Whether you click on something in a menu, or a panel, or a dock, or whatever, is down to style and personal preference. From a vendor point of view, they're primarily branding tools.

[operatingsystem121]

Don't think so, as it is a dead DE, with no future, just like kde3.


just install mate desktop, best of both worlds
It leaves a whole lot of unused dependencies and even if I remove unity, there will still be unused useless dependencies

[screaminj3sus]

It leaves a whole lot of unused dependencies and even if I remove unity, there will still be unused useless dependencies

You could do a minimal ubuntu install: http://blog.lifebloodnetworks.com/?p=1280

If you want MATE out of the box I'd recommend linux mint. the upcoming mint 15 should have a mate edition with mate 1.6 out of the box.

[vasa1]

You know Mint do a Mate? It's basically Ubuntu under the hood
Weren't they supposed to be avoiding Ubuntu ( = based directly on Debian) by now?

[carl4926]

Weren't they supposed to be avoiding Ubuntu ( = based directly on Debian) by now?

I don't recall that except in the case of LMDE
Everything else seems to be in tune with the Ubuntu releases and you can use Ubuntu PPA's

[cariboo]

The Fuduntu project just shut-down because of problems keeping a Gnome2 based distro going as everything is updated to Gnome3, can Mate be far behind?

As I suggested when the Mate project first started, they should have put their efforts into improving the Gnome3 panel, instead of trying to keep obsolete technology going, now it looks like they may have to do that anyway.

[buzzingrobot]

The Fuduntu project just shut-down because of problems keeping a Gnome2 based distro going as everything is updated to Gnome3, can Mate be far behind?

As I suggested when the Mate project first started, they should have put their efforts into improving the Gnome3 panel, instead of trying to keep obsolete technology going, now it looks like they may have to do that anyway.


The Fuduntu team's distaste for systemd had a great deal to do with their decision.

If, by suggesting MATE should merely have worked at "improving" the Gnome 3 panel you mean that the Gnome team would have given them carte blanche to do as they please, then you misunderstand Gnome's design objectives. The Gnome Shell panel looks and behaves as it does because the Gnome Shell designers and developers want it to look and behave that way, not because they lack the resources to roll out a Gnome Shell version of a Gnome 2 panel. That is precisely what they do not want to do.

The decision to keep the Gnome 2 design approach alive via MATE was, and is, a rational decision. As long as you can click on icons and launch applications with it, MATE will be not be "obsolete" (a serious misnomer, in any case). Lots of people use tools like Fluxbox and WindowMaker to do all the things that they might do with KDE or Gnome Shell or Unity. To argue that the former are obsolete while the latter are not is to believe the hype that, say, clicking on an icon in Unity's launcher is somehow more advanced than clicking on a icon in WindowMaker or clicking on a menu item in FVWM.

[kevdog]

Forgive my ignorance, I'm just asking for clarification.

What does the Fuduntu team's dislike of systemd have to do with MATE? And why did they not like systemd in the first place? I know Canonical were the creators of upstart, however I see the rest of the world switching to systemd (away from init scripts) rather than upstart. I don't remember the link I saw comparting SystemV scripts vs upstart vs systemd, however the chart implied systemd was far more advanced than upstart. Wasn't there some beef between Shuttleworth or the Ubuntu team and the creator of systemd (forgot his name but he works for red hat)?

[codingman]

The Fuduntu team's distaste for systemd had a great deal to do with their decision.


First: Where do you pick up that they have a "distaste" towards systemd?
Second: What *exactly* does this have to do with it?

Init is still working fine.

[prodigy_]

As I suggested when the Mate project first started, they should have put their efforts into improving the Gnome3 panel, instead of trying to keep obsolete technology going, now it looks like they may have to do that anyway.
Obsolete for you doesn't mean obsolete for everyone. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Gnome 3 is garbage. And it's not getting any better.

MATE is definitely the way to go right now for everyone who need a sane, productivity oriented Linux GUI (with Xfce being the plan B).

[codingman]

^Agreed. Gnome 3 is garbage. It just keeps getting more and more resource hungry.

E17 is also a very stunning DE.

[monkeybrain2012]

Obsolete for you doesn't mean obsolete for everyone. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Gnome 3 is garbage. And it's not getting any better.



It is obsolete because most applications are moving to gtk3, so Mate is getting in conflict with software updates, this is a pretty objective definition of "obsolete" IMO. xfce and Lxde have similar interfaces but they are not "obsolete" in this sense (may be stylistically, but that is subjective)


MATE is definitely the way to go right now for everyone who need a sane, productivity oriented Linux GUI

"Everyone"? That is just your opinion. I use Unity (Ubuntu), gnome shell (Debian and Fedora) and Lxde (Lubuntu on older machines), they are all good. How "productive" of course depends on your degree of familiarity. In fact I am really impressed with the way gnome shell handles multiple work places and open instances of applications after working with it for a while. Unity's dash is really efficient in locating files and applications, to me sifting through a menu to find something is really inefficient.

[cariboo]

I haven't followed Mate development, but, has it been completely rewritten to no longer use the unmaintained gtk2 libraries?

[prodigy_]

I haven't followed Mate development, but, has it been completely rewritten to no longer use the unmaintained gtk2 libraries?
It doesn't need to be completely rewritten: http://forums.mate-desktop.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1399

[buzzingrobot]

See this (http://www.fuduntu.org/blog/2013/04/15/fuduntu-team-meeting-held-on-april-14-2013/) re: Fuduntu, systemd, etc.

The suggestion was made that Fuduntu closed down because of issues with Gnome 2 (accurate as far as it goes) and, therefore, MATE must face the same issues.

I'm not a Gnome 2 or MATE diehard. I like Gnome-Shell and have no qualms about using it. But, I don't hold that newer software is, by definition, better software. Yes, it can bring new features and capabilities. But, if I don't have a desire to use the new bits, then they mean nothing to me. So. I don't accept the notion that the arrival of Gnome 3 made anything obsolete.

[JOHNNYG713]

Give SolusOS a try ! Much better (IMHO) than Mate ! It is Debian based and very stable, They use the Consort desktop, Looks and feels and acts like Gnome2 I have both of there releases installed and have no issues !
http://solusos.com/

[buzzingrobot]

It is obsolete because most applications are moving to gtk3, so Mate is getting in conflict with software updates...

As I mentioned upthread, the MATE team needs to port to gtk3. How soon that happens depends on the status of gtk3 and the resources available to the MATE team.

But, even if they never move to gtk3, the alleged update issues don't necessarily need to happen. I used to run, for example, CentOS on my desktop. That got me a 2.32 kernel, Gnome 2.28 and Python 2.6. Basically, Gnome as it was several years ago. I ran current versions of every application I wanted to run (the same applications I'd run on any other distribution). It gave me a very solid and stable platform, one with minimal updates (usually only security issues). Lots of other less stable distributions were always pushing out non-security fixes and updates that didn't concern me. Remember, updates often happen because something is wrong with the software you are already using.

After CentOS, I used Gnome-Shell for some time, and like it. I've been running MATE on Slackware for a few weeks (Slackware is an old friend I hadn't visited in a few years.) MATE on Slackware is fast, fine and stable. There's a Gnome 3.8 for Slackware in the works and I may move to that down the road, but I'm in no hurry.

From my point of view, then, software is not obsolete until it stops doing what I want it to do.

[monkeybrain2012]

But, even if they never move to gtk3, the alleged update issues don't necessarily need to happen. I used to run, for example, CentOS on my desktop. That got me a 2.32 kernel, Gnome 2.28 and Python 2.6. Basically, Gnome as it was several years ago. I ran current versions of every application I wanted to run (the same applications I'd run on any other distribution). It gave me a very solid and stable platform, one with minimal updates (usually only security issues). Lots of other less stable distributions were always pushing out non-security fixes and updates that didn't concern me. Remember, updates often happen because something is wrong with the software you are already using.

.

Well "every applications I wanted to run" is quite subjective, some people want less and some people want more, some people don't care for new features and improvement and are satisfied even if their applications are just limping along, some people have old hardware where new versions don't run, so that is not a good gauge for the capability of a platform.

Also the fact that for some people obsolete software works well enough for them doesn't make the software not obsolete. Like my brother who is stuck with win xp because some of his applications are no longer maintained and don't work with Win7 and 8 (I think may work in compatible mode but I don't know enough about ******* and have no desire to learn), he runs "every software he wants to run" in XP, doesn't mean XP is not an obsolete platform.

I also have a Centos installation (5.8) as I work with someone who use Centos So I use the excuse to play around with it a bit (thinking that it is probably similar to Fedora other than the stale software), If I want it only for a server that is quite good, but no way I would use it for my main desktop with not bleeding edge, but still reasonably up to date hardware.. Most software available is just stale beyond belief and many multimedia stuffs either don't install, or don't work because the versions are too old (to be fair, they do have some fairly up to date stuffs like R if you enable the epel repository)

BTW, gnome 2 is still supported in Debian sqeeze I think, those who don't mind out of date software and want an environment similar to Ubuntu can give it a try.

[codingman]

GNOME 2 will still be supported for a very long time, but it will not be as widespread.

[kevinmchapman]

^Agreed. Gnome 3 is garbage. It just keeps getting more and more resource hungry.

E17 is also a very stunning DE.

You missed an "IMHO" off that. I happily use both. In fact, I don't think I could apply the label "garbage" to any DE or WM.

If it is of importance to you, on the subject of resource usage, I have read two articles recently comparing resource usage of different DEs. KDE came top of both, ahead of Unity and Gnome 3.

[buzzingrobot]

Well "every applications I wanted to run" is quite subjective... not a good gauge for the capability of a platform.

I'm not aware of any accepted non-subjective standard of measure of software obsolescence, or innovation. If it meets the needs of the user, it certainly can't be considered obsolete from the user's point of view, which is the only point of view that counts.

I ran CentOS 6.2/3/4 with, as I said, the current versions of every application that was of interest to me. They are, in fact, the same versions of the same applications I use on any distribution.

BTW, other than the use of Yum and RPM's, CentOS didn't strike me as being much at all like recent version of Fedora. CentOS 6, I believe, was based on Fedora 12, but it's at release 18 currently.

To me, "obsolete" equates with "doesn't work" and "can't work". It doesn't mean "doesn't have a bunch of features newer products have". Example: KDE offers an abundance of features and built-in applications. Some folks welcome all that, but from my perspective KDE is primarily a collections of capabilities I don't have any reason to use. So, from my perspective, KDE is irrelevant, which seems to me a worse curse than being obsolete.

[mamamia88]

I would say just tweak xfce to look like gnome2

[kevdog]

Kind of off topic - but I'm currently using KDE version 4.10.2 --- it's like butter. This is coming from a former KDE hater -- god how did I hate KDE!!! But the tables have almost turned 180 degrees. I can't say I despise Gnome3 with such passion, but I really don't like it at all!! Anyone who hasn't taken a look at KDE for a while, I'd recommend at least giving it another look. I'm hooked -- for now :p

[tgalati4]

If Nautilus is an indication of where Gnome3 is going, I'll stick with Mate and Gnome2.

[codingman]

^I will too.

Gnome 3 is pathetic, and I only use it as backup if Razer-Qt doesn't work.

[buzzingrobot]

Since, rather typically, most answers here, including mine, don't address the OP's question, I'll take a stab at it: Nothing prevents a group of people from creating an independent MATE spin of Ubuntu. Will Canonical do that? No. they have no reason to do that, particularly because they've moved to consolidating Unity to run on multiple devices. Could an independent spin become an "offical" spin, like Ubuntu Gnome recently did? Sure, it's possible. I'm not sure what advantages, though, that would bring to users.

Meanwhile, installing MATE on Ubuntu is relatively simple. Someone who is bothered by the notion of Unity, etc., residing on the same drive as MATE can do a minimal install and then add MATE.

[iamkuriouspurpleoranj]

^It's not necessarily against Unity when people run MATE. It simply makes sense on a 2010 PC to run a 2010 DE. Unity makes it work too hard and it becomes too noisy to enjoy. Otherwise, Unity is my favorite of the DEs.

The only advantage would be the ability to access the paid apps of the Ubuntu software center, which I believe Mint can't do for legal reasons. If you don't want paid apps, an Ubuntu MATE version would give you nothing that Linux Mint MATE doesn't already have.

[NormanFLinux]

Kind of off topic - but I'm currently using KDE version 4.10.2 --- it's like butter. This is coming from a former KDE hater -- god how did I hate KDE!!! But the tables have almost turned 180 degrees. I can't say I despise Gnome3 with such passion, but I really don't like it at all!! Anyone who hasn't taken a look at KDE for a while, I'd recommend at least giving it another look. I'm hooked -- for now :p

You overlooked Cinnamon - its a fork of GNOME 3 but its GNOME 3 done right - and it looks the way GNOME 3 should have looked had GNOME developers not gone in a new direction. Its a sane desktop environment. Even if you despise GNOME Shell, its still worth checking out and Linux Mint has done a superb job of making a GNOME 2 style operating system run on top of the GNOME 3 technologies.

[mikodo]

I haven't followed Mate development, but, has it been completely rewritten to no longer use the unmaintained gtk2 libraries?
Interestingly, I spent a few hours looking at MATE's Home Deskop-Wiki (http://wiki.mate-desktop.org) and talking to people on #mate IRC today. MATE version 1.6, was released April 02, 2013. (http://mate-desktop.org/2013/04/02/mate-1-6-released/)

Version 1.8 continues under heavy development (http://wiki.mate-desktop.org/roadmap#release_16), and is to have GTK2 and GTK3 functionality, so each distro can choose, which libraries it wants to use and will support the Wayland display server. It has a busy forum. (http://forums.mate-desktop.org/)

It can be installed as a desktop environment on Ubuntu, instead of Unity for 12.04 with 32-bit from Sourceforge, (http://sourceforge.net/projects/ubuntumate/) or can be installed from this page by adding one of these repositories, (http://wiki.mate-desktop.org/download#ubuntu) to your Ubuntu version's /etc/apt/sources.list and updating and installing.

All in all, it seems to be a growing project with a vibrant community. Here is a list of Distro's (http://mate-desktop.org/about/) providing MATE, with a link to installing, to many other distro's.

Oh, I forgot to include a video from July 20, 2013 on MATE's Development, (http://mate-desktop.org/2013/07/21/stefano-at-opensuse-conference/) from Stefano Karapetsas in Greece, at the openSUSE conference.

Caveat: To the question posed by cariboo907, there is this outstanding Debian Bug (http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=658783) when Debian was requested to include MATE, where one person indicated that MATE, remains to have obsolete technologies, that I don't know if is accurate, now. I believe MATE has not been included into Debian Proper, as of yet.

Will I install MATE, as a primary DE? Not likely, but the project intrigues me enough, to have it installed. I'll probably follow it's development, with it on Debian Stable.

How would this look, on Discourse?

[montag dp]

You overlooked Cinnamon - its a fork of GNOME 3 but its GNOME 3 done right - and it looks the way GNOME 3 should have looked had GNOME developers not gone in a new direction. Its a sane desktop environment. Even if you despise GNOME Shell, its still worth checking out and Linux Mint has done a superb job of making a GNOME 2 style operating system run on top of the GNOME 3 technologies.Just curious, but do you consider Unity a sane desktop environment? I'm always amazed that people (not necessarily you) would like Unity but think Gnome Shell is terrible. They are in fact very similar in their approach, with slightly different focuses that appeal to different people. I personally love Gnome Shell and find Unity to be okay, but kind of like a more annoying, less fluid version of Gnome Shell.

[craig10x]

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

[vasa1]

... How would this look, on Discourse?
Excellent idea. Very few posts there today.

[ZoiaGuyver]

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]

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

[jivabill]

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]

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]

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.

[W3MrYhR]

Ubuntu MATE Remix is out!

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ubuntumate/

[Buntu Bunny]

Ubuntu MATE Remix is out!

I may have to give this a try on my old laptop. I've been having too many update errors with Voyager.