How was your experience switching from Ubuntu?

Gents:

My 1st post … as a potential Ubuntu-Mate user. I run Xeon & AMD home-built systems under Ubuntu 16.04 … and have been a Linux-mostly usr sice RedHat-6. I’ve used Ubuntu since U_6.06 for everything except home-science hardware, under the MATE desktop. Recently I tried upgrading from U_16.04.5 to U_18.04.1 … and trashed the Xeon system when the upgrade lost-fonts and then all text display during configuration. I had to re-install U_16.04 from scratch, and decided Cannonical no-longer-cares at all about the desktop. So I think about switching to U_Mate distro and leave Cannonical for Microsoft to swallow. Yes I do believe GNOME-2 near perfection and use the MATE desktop with great pleasure. Now to switch distros … what is the experience of those already treading this path?

(Un)fortunately, canonical plays a part in ubuntu MATE as well.

Well, of all the Linux distros with MATE, Mageia and out of the BSDs, GhostBSD are the only ones using mate- tweak applet in any form. I`d suggest trying out a live ISO or an install in a separate partition (I condone VBox), to try them out.

Other distros I`d suggest: OpenMandriva, Fedora, Korora (new community spins), openSUSE, Archlabs, Calculate and SolydXK. (Solus too, maybe after v4)

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The standard edition of Linux Mint (the latest being version 19, built on an Ubuntu base) uses the Mate desktop out of the box as one of its flavours. But, it needs a few tweaks to get it looking like Ubuntu Mate Desktop. Linux Mint also comes with a Debian base. This is called LMDE (Linux Mint Debian edition). Unfortunately, the latest version of LMDE (LMDE 3) only comes with the Cinnamon desktop out of the box (but it has only just been released and so this may change). So, for the moment, for those requiring a Mate desktop with LMDE, they must install it after initial installation of the OS. This isn’t hard at all for experienced users. But, can be a bit confusing for new users.

Hallo willscranton

I did just that, U to U-M, about three years ago. Never looked back. End of story. :slight_smile:

Outside of work I only run Linux, it’s been that way for just over 5 years now. :penguin:

U-M does everything I need (I need a lot).

Having said that, I do hope that pdftk and pdfchain become available on 18.04.1 before I upgrade. :construction_worker:

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I think you should give Ubuntu-Mate 18.04.1 a try. As one who switched from Ubuntu to Ubuntu-mate 16.04, I can tell you that I find Ubuntu-mate vastly superior to the standard Ubuntu desktop. I also just upgraded two of our systems to Ubuntu-mate 18.04.1 and am extremely pleased with this version, with the traditional panel.

Outside of that, I would recommend Debian Stretch with the Mate desktop. The software is a bit behind that of Ubuntu-mate 18.04.1, but this is Debian’s stable branch. That being said, it will take a bit of tweaking to make Debian Mate look as well as Ubuntu-mate, and if you prefer Compiz for a window manager, you will need to add compiz-reloaded. Debian seems to be a little less “out of the box” ready when compared to Ubuntu-Mate. But if you like to tweak a system to your liking, Debian is a good base to start with.

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This is where LMDE comes into its own I think. It’s Debian, but with the rough edges knocked off.

I just installed Debian Stretch on a VM just to give it a spin and do some testing and learning. For some weird reasons, or maybe it was me, I selected MATE but it has been installed with GNOME 3 :expressionless: … I guess I have to purge that and install MATE manually.

Those aside, I’ve been a Linux user since 2016, and a distro switcher,until I came upon Ubuntu MATE, this here when Bionic was released, and it’s stopped my distro hopping and I’m very happy.

Before that I used mostly Linux Mint and then Ubuntu 16.04. I would’ve stayed on Ubuntu if they hadn’t switch to GNOME 3 :expressionless:

I’m very content with what UM is providing me with, and it’s perfectly balanced that provides a stable environment where I can do programming, development, testing, enjoy entertainment and whatnot…

I recommend the net installer with Debian. When you get to the part of the installation that asks what desktop and other utilities you would like to install, leave all of the ones that are pre-checked as they are, and additionally check the Mate Desktop, then proceed. The rest is self-explanatory. One big plus about the Debian mate installation is the very low system RAM consumption out of the box. About 350 MB. Having said that, it is bare bones mate and to make it like UM takes a lot of tweaking.

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I actually just learned of LMDE yesterday. Will have to test that in a VM when time permits.

I would second your recommendation. However, I prefer to install the base system only. Then install Mate desktop by issuing the sudo apt install mate-desktop-environment-extras command. This is a very minimal approach to installing Mate desktop on Debian, and there is much to do afterward in order to have a fully functioning desktop environment. Depending on your requirements of course.

In addition, one would want to uncheck Debian desktop environment when taking this approach, or when setting up a server.

ref. http://wiki.mate-desktop.org/download

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I have a feeling the “Debian desktop environment” is just a set of basic desktop utilities and xorg GUI manager. It’s not an actual desktop itself. To that end, it might have been less confusing if they had called it “Debian desktop utilities”.

I think the confusion originally arose because, up to and including Wheezy, if no actual desktop was selected in addition to the “Debian desktop environment”, Gnome 3 was installed by default. But, this has since been remedied in Jessie onwards. Now, if you do not select an actual desktop in addition to “Debian desktop environment”, you will not have any of them installed by default.

The important point to note, here, is that if the “Debian desktop environment” is de-selected and a given desktop (such as, say, Mate) is selected, then following the installation, the selected desktop will not be immediately accessible due to a lack of basic utilities, such as xorg. This is because such desktops do not come with these utilities included.

So, to have full and immediate access to one’s chosen desktop following initial installation, one should allow the installation of the “Debian desktop environment” at the same time as the chosen desktop. Though, of course, one could alternatively choose to manually install said utilities including xorg at the CLI following initial installation

Or, finally, one could just install the base system and do everything manually at the CLI following initial installation.

It’s a very flexible installation system.

e.g.

  1. base system

  2. base system + Debian desktop environment

  3. base system + Debian desktop environment + chosen desktop

  4. base system + chosen desktop

Number 3 is what most people, most of the time, should choose.

Unless I have got it all completely wrong - in which case, people should ignore everything I have just written…:joy:

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Actually had that very thing happen in a Jessie VM install once. I assumed if you selected Debian desktop environment with no other desktop, it would default to Gnome 3.

That is correct, and a good point. If you install the base system and Mate desktop as environment, as I mentioned in my previous post, you will have to install xorg as well.

sudo apt install mate-desktop-environment-extras
and
sudo apt install xinit

will give you a functioning Mate desktop, that requires a login from the command line, followed by issuing startx to start the desktop session. Of course you could install greater like lightdm if a desktop environment is your only objective.

One alternative to installing a greater would be to add

if [ -z “$DISPLAY” ] && [ $(tty) == /dev/tty1 ]; then
startx
fi

to your .bashrc file. This automates startx with every login there after.

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I like that. Nice, simple and austere.

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