Mate in Unity Environment

[ping-wu]

System: Ubuntu 16.04.

We are dual-booting Mate and Unity. Recently we installed Mate DE in the Unity partition and boot into Mate. However, the Mate-in-Unity desktop looks slightly different from pure Mate. Does anyone know why this is so?

[stevecook172001]

Do you mean “pure Mate” or “pure Ubuntu Mate”? They are slightly different. That is to say, the UM desktop carries quite a few extra bits compared to the vanilla Mate desktop. That being the case, did you install the Mate desktop or the Ubuntu Mate desktop?

[ping-wu]

Thanks. Just checked (with Synaptic). I installed mate-desktop not ubuntu-mate-desktop.

Will it be safe to just purge mate and install ubuntu-mate?

[wolfman]

Hi @ping-wu,

you could simply add the following package via the terminal (Ctrl + Alt + t):

sudo apt-get install mate-desktop-environment-extras

Or, you can use the “Something Else Method” and keep your files intact (if you do it right!):

Install Ubuntu (Mate) using "Something else" method

Hi all, this guide can be used on any Ubuntu based system and is intended for people who have a basic working knowledge of an Ubuntu installation and wish to keep the contents of their home folder after doing a re-install. This guide is also intended for those that already have an existing swap, root and home partition setup!!. If you have not done/never done any pre-partitioning, please see this guide about using Gparted partition editor: See also: https://help.ubuntu.com/community…

[lah7]

Will it be safe to just purge mate and install ubuntu-mate?

You can just install ubuntu-mate-desktop which will install all the extras bundled with Ubuntu MATE.

However, a word of caution, you’ll end up with two sets of desktop applications in both MATE and Unity - such as gedit and Pluma for a text editor, Caja and Files for the file manager, etc.

I’m slightly confused by your set up, as it sounds like you’ve got one Ubuntu partition with two desktop environments installed, which isn’t the same as dual booting.

[elcste]

However, a word of caution, you’ll end up with two sets of desktop applications in both MATE and Unity - such as gedit and Pluma for a text editor, Caja and Files for the file manager, etc.

You may also get other doubles that can be even more annoying. For example, I recently was trying Xfce and after installing it the Xfce power manager still took over in MATE, so while the volume controls were the standard MATE ones, the screen and keyboard backlight controls were the Xfce ones.