After reading this forum for some time now, I finally decided to join the community. Hopefully I can be of some assistance to others while I’m here. I have been using different Linux distributions off and on since the Mandrake 6.0 days (1999?), mostly dual booting with windows back then. Currently my wife and I collectively have two laptops running Ubuntu-Mate 16.04, one netbook running Xubuntu 16.04, and a 2008 macbook running Ubuntu-Mate 17.04, all dedicated linux boxes.
My most recent project was replacing OS X with Ubuntu-Mate 17.04 beta 2 on the mackbook, which is what I’m typing from now. I am very well pleased with how 17.04 runs on this machine, much better than any other Linux distribution tried to date. Honestly this machine hasn’t seen much action for the last two years, but it seems to have some new life now.
Anyway, many thanks to all who have worked on Ubuntu-Mate, very well done. It’s going to be interesting to see how this distribution grows over time.
Welcome! Great to have you with us! Mandrake was my first real revelation too, and it was amazing to realize that level of freedom was available to you, - to do anything you wanted, and needed to do, to make your system work the way you wanted it.
Ubuntu Mate’s ended up being my de-facto platform for just getting things done, and it’s replaced Windows for several elderly relatives who needed something less prone to malware and phishing attempts. The future’s definitely looking interesting, - and it’s a huge relief to see Mate not succumb to the flat & colourless design fads that have left other OSs useless for those of us without perfect vision.
I just installed 17.04 from 16.10, what a difference! Things feel more polished and speedier. I left windows for UM about 6 months ago and have not looked back. Thank you everyone.
