Hi asdasd,
did you do a clean install of UM or did you install the Mate packages on top of stock Ubuntu?. 
I also have to say I was very disappointed with Ubuntu MATE 18.04. There was an error during installation, but it continued anyway. Way too many bugs makes it useless. I mean when I minimize a window and there is no way to get it back, what am I supposed to do? I should have stayed with 16.04 which was working okay.
It seems there will be many Ubuntu MATE 18.04 BETA testers now that it has been released, way too soon.
And, yes I did a clean install.
In case anyone needs an example:
- Have a panel layout that includes the Dock,
- right click on the Dock
- choose “About…”
=> the “About Dock Applet” window appears but without a representation in the dock itself or the window list … and it has a minimize button, so once you hit that, the window irrecoverably disappears
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mate-dock-applet/+bug/1767608
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I played around with 18.04 on real hardware now by installing on a separate harddisk.
Some observations:
I think overall it looks cleaner and more polished compared to 18.04. However, I did run into a couple of issues:
-
Panel switching and customization is still a mess.
You sometimes end up with an extra panel you didn’t create, or completely empty layouts when switching around between the various preset options and/or logging out+in.
Especially the dock applet tends to misbehave by crashing often and otherwise having graphical glitches.
It took me at least half an hour before I finally got my favourite panel layout nailed down and working without constant issues - I’d wager many people will lose patience long before that. -
The dock applet does not pick up the correct icons for some applications (e.g. Descent 1/2 from d1x-rebirth / d2x-rebirth). This worked fine in 16.04, but 18.04 shows a placeholder. Plank somehow does show the correct icon, though, even in 18.04.
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I thought the Mate project was born from the realization that a ‘classic’ UI is classic for a reason. I thought the whole point was to keep the simplicity and speed of Gnome 2. Unless it is a slam dunk improvement in simplicity and speed UI changes should be rejected.
Even if there is a slam dunk improvement it should be tested thoroughly, and the user’s path to the new idea smoothed out fully, with an easy fallback option always available. If Notification Area is being replaced by Indicator Applet Complete, don’t you think the transition should either be handled seamlessly, or the user informed during the welcome?
Brisk menu is not a slam dunk, sorry. It is a lame copy of the Windows 10 thing—please, STOP! If you want to add a search bar under the classic menu, fine, but make sure it really works, i.e. actually saves time.
first, try reset pulseaudio home configuration files:
pulseaudio-driver-update-no-good
Pulseaudio configuration file daemon.conf can be adjusted for different sample -format and sample-rate if you want more than 16-bit 44100Hz
I had similar thoughts to @asdasd -- I was re-installing my work laptop from Ubuntu 17.10 (GNOME). Jumping back to MATE will be a better home at work then GNOME for me -- since the lock ups and stuttering interface were unobtrusive.
These are the papercuts I ran into:
- Brisk could easily crash -- usually by moving the cursor down the categories or scrolling apps way too fast when it first loads.
- Searching with Brisk isn't so obvious of what's in focus. The application on the right is focused, but it visually looks like the category is the focused item.
- I tried to copy & paste text from Disks, but despite it actually copying with CTRL+C, no highlight was seen like this:
- Macro still has a small resize area.
- The "window previews" on Compiz appear on a different workspace when they're not supposed to -- I use CCSM to turn off that plugin and do other tweaks.
- That keyboard indicator........ 2 or 3 times that caught me out!
I don't need it, but I did need to switch from US to UK keyboard layout.
- Could easily get out of jail by running "
mate-panel --replace" in ALT+F2.
- Could easily get out of jail by running "
- Switching layouts did once minimise everything (did trigger an initial panic -- "no... did it crash?!"), but at one point, I was left with a blank panel. Had to launch
mate-tweakvia ALT+F2 and choose it again. - Macro seems to minimze windows to the middle of the screen? (Compiz is fine)
- I got really confused why two fingers on the trackpad didn't perform a right click... then I discovered I need to press the bottom-right edge... I think that's because a new touchpad driver now?
I'm aware that:
-
mate-panelhas some known segfault issues, so that could be why panel switching can be a little buggy right now. - The "beep" on opening/closing windows is to do with accessibility. (I don't mind it as much)
- There's a bit of an issue with Welcome autostarting, so it's startup is delayed AFAIK.
- Caught me out when it popped up after I started using the live session!
Take a look at this for the reasons 
For my desktop at home, I shall stick with 16.04 and the GTK2 experience. I'm not disappointed with 18.04, but knowing about the technical progress over the past 2 years, I'm not surprised rough edges will appear once everyone starts using it (if you run into them that is!)
@ nikgomic - I have already edited the .conf to set 24bit and 96khz as the defaults. It is a big improvement. I can live with it for now.
I was able to use WASAPI (push) mode inside Wine to bypass Pulse and give the USB sound card (semi-)exclusively to the music player. This enabled music to play with the bit rate and sample rate of the source file. It was possible because of a 3rd party package called wineasio from KXStudio repos. I am unable to install it because of “you have held packages” error in Synaptic.
Little by little I am fixing what I can. I am still getting ‘Permission denied’ when trying to run a crontab that was running fine in 16.04—good job, fellas, way to go breaking venerable old cron! I’m pretty sure in due course of time I’ll have a fully functional system that does everything I need. It’s just too much work, too much time lost. I had a great experience with 16.04. The huge blunder I made was not saving a drive image of that install as a backup. If I had done that I would be back in there in a heartbeat! I am hoping to get 18.04 to the same ball park, and then I’ll leave it alone until it’s time to retire this hardware, which will be in 2-3 years.
Well I have been using 18.04 from the pre beta daily releases on and have few serious issues at all, a couple application crashes perhaps gdebi not working right at first a few brisk menu crases but not many, and other than that It has been good even with adding ppas and snaps so I would say I have had good experience and its the same with both my desktop and laptop
@ lah7 - I have never used the 2 panel layout. I have 2 monitors, with 1 transparent panel each, 26 pixels and 20 pixels height respectively. One has the Brisk menu, which I use only when something is running in full screen mode (usually VLC) on the other monitor. I have tweaked the preferences to remove items from System, and show the Favorites by default, but I cannot change what apps are favorites. If I could choose my own favorites the Brisk menu would work for me. I keep all frequently used apps in my main panel anyway. I use the menu only for the less often used apps—I would place those in Favorites.
I have restored the Places menu in Traditional because the desktop does not show any icons any more, but it does not show my Samba mounts by default. I don’t know how to tweak that, but I can add bookmarks in Caja and they will show up. I don’t want it to show me my other drive which has Windows on it. I can turn off auto mount in Disks. Right click on desktop is dead, but I only used it to change the wallpaper, and I only do that once every several weeks, so it’s not a deal breaker.
Fingerprint authentication does not work in 18.04. I miss that because of how often I have to sudo in terminal, or graphical.
Having multiple workspaces is the main ‘hook’ that keeps me in Linux. When I do switch over to Windows I look for it, and then, “oh, that’s right, I can’t do that in Windows” — it’s the only ‘hook’ right now. Compiz is nice but it’s broken anyway in 18.04. Luckily my 2 Wine apps work reliably. If either of those breaks I’m back to Windows full time.
If you open the panel’s properties by right clicking a blank part of the panel like a separator, you can uncheck expand. Then you can drag the panel to the second monitor. So add a second panel. Then drag it to your second monitor.
You need to do a sudo apt-get upgrade install-dist.
why not do same in Linux and play sound direct to ALSA device?
KX packages have been a problem in all Ubuntu versions for a while and not due for update to 18.04 for another 2 or 3 months
A gentle request to please link to bug reports so all of this will actually be fixed.
How? I can’t figure this stuff out on my own, I am not a techie. I googled and researched quite a bit to figure out the wineasio solution because I don’t like the Rhythmbox interface, and it does not support customization like Foobar does. Foobar2000 has become a ‘must have’ app for me.
The KX packages worked for me in 16.04 to 17.1 but I remember it being a complicated install. It involved jackd and other manual configs. I don’t even remember! I should have kept a log of the steps (this is all too much work). I used to type in CLI pulseaudio -D after every boot.
(I don’t mean to hijack this thread which is about first impressions of 18.04)
Daniel, let me post a gentle reminder that for me Linux is not my life. I resent the time it eats up. If it is a matter of a few clicks I don’t mind at all. I always send crash reports when Ubuntu prompts me to. Having said that, I should say it is free software so bug reports are a fair price to pay. I’ll go to that section right now and read up how to do it. I don’t believe I have the technical knowledge to make intelligent bug reports.
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I asked the question so if you could be so kind as to provide the walk through it would be highly appreciated. I started Rhythmbox, and it is now scanning my library at a crawling slow speed.
Hi all,
I have been using 18.04 since Beta 1 and don’t have any of the problems listed by many people above. I am using the “Traditional Panel” layout and have updated each and every time I switched on my PC in the morning, my only problem (not Ubuntu Mate related) is with My Weather Indicator which forgets which town I set it for at each boot, it seems to be okay now since the final was released!.
Anyone having a specific problem with something should start their own thread if they haven’t already done so!.
Thanks for that mate, I have marked myself as affected on the bug report.
Can you say if this also happens for windows that correspond to their own program?
(What I mean is, This About window is not actually an individual program, instead it’s one window of the larger mate-dock-applet program)
I haven’t found another example, yet, that is exactly like that.
Though I did notice that various programs are a bit inconsistent in the way additional windows do/do not show up in dock applet / window list.
Some examples:
- Pluma: both Preferences and About window are shown in dock applet, but not in window list (only the main Pluma window)
- Caja: Preferences shows up in window list only, About shows up in neither