What the bleep is a pomodoro timer?
I’ve tried gnome-pomodoro, but it doesn’t work out of the box, and I don’t want further tweaking to make it work.
Any alternatives that you have?
You could try smoking. I get my breaks that way. Not every 25 minutes though, thank goodness 
Seriously though, you will probably like Zeegaree. It’s specially designed to be used with the Pomodoro technique. You will want the lite-version that gets you the stopwatch and timer minus the time management part of the program.
It’s easy to install too. Just head to the github project page, download somewhere and execute with python. Instruction on the github project page.
Gnome Pomodoro doesn't work in Ubuntu MATE? I don't know how to get it installed but would like to give it a try.
Zeegaree looks interesting. I don't understand the installation instructions. Could you help me to get it installed?
You can install it through the Software Center. It installs and runs, but it doesn't show in the indicator. In order to get it working you have to install Gnome-tweak and other stuff, almost like installing Gnome itself on top of MATE.
Sounds really good. I'm in a KISS phase of my life so I will wait till they have a package where I can keep it updated automatically.