This must be a dumb question, but I'm a new user and cannot find anything called "app-center" in any of the "bin" directories on my PATH including /usr/bin, /usr/sbin, or /snap/bin. And "snap find app-center" doesn't show it either. Running MATE 24.04 LTS".
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Hi, @TimH and welcome to the Ubuntu MATE Community!
You should just be able to click on it from your menu. Which menu do you use? I use the Classic menu.
If you are not seeing it look under
system>preference>hardware>look and feel>main menu and make sure it is checked to show in your menu.
Then click on it and it should start.
If the doesn't do it you have a bigger problem.
Personally I don't use it. I prefer Synaptic which is a very powerful apt tool for software.
You may have to install it from the terminal.
sudo apt-get install synaptic
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I agree with Jim. Synaptic is excellent!
I wish I could change some of the GUI defaults, but I don't understand the coding languages and have not been able to identify where I could "tweak" the default window size and placement for
- repository update download window [A], and
- package download/update window [B].
If I could be so bold as to express my desires there, I wish the default window geometry for both [A] and [B] was
- width = 90% of display width
- height= 30% of display height
- centered on horizontal
- top edge at midpoint of display.
I also wish there was a button to single-click that would allow either
- copy the full terminal session text into buffer for pasting, or
- trigger a pop-up window for a "save-as" dialog with full filesystem traversing capabilities.
Ahh yes, there it is. But the menu is rather extensive and expecting new users to just jump right to it isn't realistic; the Release Notes and Help System should say where it is as well as what it is.
One other thing: App Center lists things like "Budgie Welcome Center", which is clearly not relevant to MATE users. How can I know if any other software is perhaps less obviously unsuitable for MATE?
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Only by testing the software and surviving the experience. 'App Center' is a launcher for the snap-store. It does not provide a curated list of applications for Ubuntu MATE.
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Synaptic is well worth learning. In years past there was no app center or app boutique, you either learned to use synaptic or the terminal. I opted for synaptic because I am a lousy typist with poor memory for remembering on the terminal command and syntax.
It took me years to learn to cd. I would cd downloads and get folder or file doesn't exist. Finally it dawned on me it has to be cd Downloads, which seems weird because other than the User folders Linux almost never uses caps!
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I know about synaptic (and I've been using some flavor of Linux/Unix almost daily now for nearly half a century).
I'm a bit surprised that a mature distro like MATE would foist its App Center off on snap, however, especially since by most accounts flatpak is a better platform. My previous distro was ElementaryOS, which does just that with its App Center.
I've installed flatpak via apt and added its default remote repository, but for some reason "flatpak search" isn't working though I can install things ... be nice it it were installed by default!
Ubuntu MATE used to provide flatpak support out of the box. From Ubuntu MATE 22.04 release notes:
But then, a year later, something happened. From 23.04 release notes:
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"snap" is the Canonical-endorsed "App Encapsulating" vehicle.
That is because it wanted to streamline the manpower/cost/complexity of such integration for the many Canonical-endorsed Ubuntu distro flavours. It also has to do with their assessment of the support for snap perceive by the players/drivers in the ecosystem (hardware/software developers).
As with any such Corporate-level decisions they are very hard to reverse once made, but ... "user revolts" have had an impact in the past (as seen with the Unity interface being supplanted by Gnome as Display Manager for the default distro).
If they don't come to your "ballpark", which is what happened with Unity, eventually ... you abandon that ballpark and go where the players/spectators are, hence Gnome. 
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Replacing one bad desktop with another bad desktop wasn't an improvement, which is why we are all on Ubuntu MATE!
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Jim, I am with you 100% on that comment.
I did not say that I was on Gnome, only that the "ecosystem players" were trending towards that, which is why Canonical has bet the farm on it. Bad bet in my opinion ... at least for what I see at this time.
I have only one DM. No alternates are even installed on my machine. I had KDE on in parallel for a while about 6 years ago, but it just didn't behave per my instinctive expectations, so I purged it after futzing with it for about 6 months.