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Old School


raymac46

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MATE-1024x576.jpg

 

 

What with Ubuntu switching from Unity to GNOME in its next release it might be a good alternative to try Ubuntu-MATE. Here's how it looks in VirtualBox. Old school for sure - a trip down Memory Lane for GNOME-ies. Runs well in VBox with Guest Additions working right away after installation. Not sure if I want to go back here though.

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Other than personal preferences, no reason not to go back to Mate, IMO! Mate has recently completed it's switch to the GTK3 toolkit and is now 100% compatible, as I understand it. Despite the switch to GTK3, it still feels pretty snappy & responsive. So despite the bad rap, I can only guess GTK3 isn't the culprit with "desktop bloat", but perhaps autostarted background services and the window manager?

 

I still prefer my LXDE desktop, but LXDE seems to be stuck straddling the fence between GTK2 and QT toolkits. GTK2 will be deprecated at some point, and migration to QT has been glacially slow. While I like the direction of LXQT, with no plans to leave the fold because of it, it just isn't ready yet. But this LXDE-RazorQT merger has been going on for so long now that it makes me nervous they haven't completed the migration/switchover yet. Ikey Doherty crafted a very popular, well integrated desktop (Budgie) from scratch in less time than LXDE-QT announced their merger of already-existing desktops. How many years does it take?

 

Mate is almost as malleable as LXDE (perhaps just as malleable?!), but with a whole lot of additional features by default. They've also produced an ARM distro for Raspberry Pi boxes, tuned for the Pi! Just seems to be very polished, well integrated, and forward looking vision, despite retro layout. If LXDE/LXQT becomes an issue for me, I'd have no qualms switching to the Mate desktop.....as long as I can substitute my Fluxbox/Openbox/PekWM window manager for Mate's Mutter(?) window manager. At this point, I NEED my customized hotkey/right click menus! I'm pretty sure it can be done, but haven't bothered to investigate yet. Other than that, Mate is ready to roll for users like myself! JMO...

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@HJ agree with much of what you say. MATE might be a good place to go even if you are an Xfce fan. That desktop appears to be in a development freeze as well.

At least one YouTube guy (Joe Collins) has suggested Ubuntu MATE as a good candidate for new users - lighter weight than Mint, some nice tools like MATE Tweak and Software Boutique. Tweak lets you set things up like Windows XP if you want. The Software Boutique lets you install stuff with one click - even if it is not in the main repos. I used it to install Google Chrome; it tried and failed with Google Earth although I did get Google Earth through the command line (apt.)

If you have a new user who wants to try out Ubuntu, MATE might be a good way to go.

Edited by raymac46
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Speaking of Ubuntu 17,10 I did see a review of it and it looks like Canonical is trying to maintain a bit of the old Unity look. They have installed Dash to Dock and modified it a bit so they have the familiar icons on the left hand side.

Wayland will be the default display server although X will still be available if needed.

I think I'd still use MATE though. I have a pretty good GNOME desktop now with Debian.

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I used MATE once a while back. It was a one of the Makalu's I tried and I thought it was very slick. Almost sure it did not have the bar at the top of the screen and I seem to recall it had a second desktop that was full of app icons. All in all their spin on it was neat which surprised me as I am not a Gnomie fan at all.

 

:breakfast:

 

I knew that the Mate I was using did not have a bar at the top so I had a hunt through thr desktop screen shot thread and found that I had posted several Mate screenshots.

 

Q5BA0gR.jpg

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Mate Tweak offers several desktops so if you want a Windows look it's easy. What I don't like is with the Beta release they are using a very obsolete version of Firefox. A lot of extensions like Adblock Plus don't work. I'd never install for real until they get all the bugs out and the software up to date.

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