I’ve been using Ubuntu MATE for awhile but this is the first time on the forum. Was using 14.04 and just upgraded it to 16.04. The dist-upgrade went flawlessly, which can be a rare occurrence with Ubuntu upgrades, not a single issue which is impressive. Just want to say thanks for all the hard work on the distro and for making a sane version of Ubuntu for users 
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The irony is, it’s more sane and simple than Ubuntu will ever be. Oh, Canonical.
(Then again GNOME team did make sure Ubuntu got fsck’d right up the floppy drive with GNOME-Shell so it’s not really their fault honest.)
I agree. And you are right about Ubuntu being in the lurch, as was Mint when Gnome went off the deep end. I think Ubuntu made a mistake getting rid of Unity 2 D which was great on resources even if a bit of an odd paradigm. Unity is a resource hog. MATE and Xfce are my two favorites and MATE offers a few more perks.
I’ve given Gnome 3 a spin a couple of times. Mainly in 3.18 and 3.20. I can’t make myself stick with it. In order to use it I have to remove Nautilus and install Thunar because I can’t stand the stripped down mess Nautilus has become. I also don’t see the need to install a half dozen extensions or run in the classic mode to get it to act somewhat like a traditional desktop. All I need is a basic desktop on my systems and a terminal. XFCE has been my DE of choice for the past couple of years. It is basic with enough options to do what I need to do.
After using Linux for over 20 years I’m at the point that I just want to install the system as hassle free as possible, adjust the installed programs to those that I prefer, and make a few system tweaks and go on with things. After test driving UM 16.04 I came to the conclusion that this is what I have been looking for. It is pleasant and straight forward enough for my wife’s laptop, and still offers the flexibility for me to play around on my systems and push the envelope when I feel the need. It’s kind of traditional tastefully approaching the future. The norm these days seems to be pushing a mobile environment with a lot of effects, and little substance to the desktop.
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I think many of these DE’s are wasting time chasing mobile. Linux already won mobile via Android. I also gave Gnome a fair shot, but they kept hiding things and making it a chore to use. Gnome 2 was just about perfect, so glad to see MATE moving that excellent paradigm forward. Xfce has gotten incredibly good over the past couple of years.
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One thing I have to take into consideration when picking a distro is my wife. I bought her a laptop and started her on Linux when we met 7 years ago. She has her degree in business which basically gets used to take care of our finances. She doesn’t care for KDE, but is a huge fan of kmymoney. I’ve had her using xfce recently.Normally when I distro hop everything in the house hops with me.lol She got a little upset when I started messing around with UM 16.04. So I made a deal with her. I would install it and set it up the way she wanted it, and would let it run the full 3yr life cycle without installing something else. In return she could ask me about issues or how to do something, but it was going to be on her to take my advice and fix the issues herself. I thought as polished and user friendly as this distro is it would be a comfortable place for her to take a little more responsibility of her system.
I have to agree with the Linux Kernel and Android owning the mobility market. I would really like to see Ubuntu Touch finally become mainstream. I would prefer to just have a more functional Linux environment on my phone and tablets than Android offers. I use it but for what I use my phone and tablet for at work Android is a little limited in it’s offerings.
Luckily my wife doesn’t really need anything but a web browser. I moved her to a Chromebook and now have zero problems or requests to ‘fix’ it. Also have a Chromebook myself and run Linux on it. And I keep an older Linux desktop set up mostly for printing.
Love both Xfce and MATE. I’ve pretty much given up on all other Linux desktops. KDE was my first Linux desktop and was a big fan, but like Gnome–they can’t seem to let it be but have a revolution every couple of years. I’m a KISS Principle kind of guy and that makes MATE and Xfce work for me.
I think Ubuntu’s idea to have a phone interface that you could plug into a monitor and go full-desktop was a great idea. I don’t know how well they can pull it off. As for just a phone, Android has decent apps and does a reasonably good job. Google’s massive failure though is security. Google has got to find a way to get phones updated and keep them updated, that is my biggest Android concern and why Apple has an edge on them in the security area.
Regarding distro-hopping. I loved doing that the first few years with Linux and learned a ton about Linux in the process. But now I have settled down and just want something that works and is reliable that doesn’t break and I’m not constantly fixing. So I stick to LTS releases only, and reliable desktops like MATE and Xfce. Also I keep Debian Stable on an external drive or two for backup.
If you’re interested in that idea, see if you can’t flash Maru onto your Android device.
Maru is basically what Canonical wants, but without shoehorning Ubuntu into it; For somebody like me who loves the desktop experience, having a dock I can use for charging and a (very short) HDMI cable would be all I’d probably need if I didn’t need to do more with Linux or Windows.
That sounds interesting. I figure someone is going to get that right eventually. Like you, I want the full desktop experience, but I think there are people who would do just fine with a phone they could convert into a desktop device.
I use my phone at work in the oilfield as a tally book. I run a copy of the report I use on it. The report is and xlxs spreadsheet. I have a Samsung Note 5 and until the last update of the Excel app all was fine. After the update Excel defaulted to ink annotation which made using the spreadsheet useless. The update effected my phone but not my tablet. The tablet is not an option to use on location due to it’s size. I’m thinking if Ubuntu ever gets the Touch system working correctly for more than a few select devices it would open up the opportunity to at least be able to use Libreoffice in situations like this.
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Would Google Sheets work? I know sometimes Google’s office/docs are more limited, but between Google Docs/Sheets and Libreoffice I am free of MS Office. But I know there are some MS features folks need. There was talk of a mobile version of Libreoffice for awhile but not sure it is getting anywhere.
I used to only use my phone for calls and occasional texts, but find myself using it more and more over time. It can’t do any ‘heavy lifting’ though and my main computer is my laptop.
I carry my personal phone the Note 5 as well as my company iphone. I keep all my daily work stored in my own personal cloud accounts and use my personal phone for working when outside of my truck on location. I gave Google sheets a shot. Doesn’t work real well when away from the company hot spot in my truck. Tends to loose entered data when it drops the wifi signal. The Libreoffice mobile app is very beta and basically only a document reader at this time with no ability to input data. One of the joys of mobile devices at this time. Not a lot of options for anything more serious that making a call, sending a text, watching a video, or playing games. There are other office apps out there but they are plagued with ads or not very functional when dealing with ms formatted documents.
Google has gotten better over the years at allowing its apps to work off line:
Not sure how well that would work with Sheets, but might be worth a try. I know my Chromebook is set for off line use for Docs. The bad thing about so many new phones is small amount of storage and no micro sdcard.
You probably wouldn’t want to carry one but one of the lightweight Chromebooks with 11" screen set to work both offline with Google apps and loaded with either Crouton Ubuntu or legacy boot with a full Ubuntu MATE install on a usb stick would have you covered. About 2 more lbs to carry around and you would have 10 hour+ battery.
Well I’m still impressed with Ubuntu Mate. I think it will keep me out of the dog house with my wife and her laptop. I see a reload coming on my laptop though. I think I will dual boot between Ubuntu Mate and Kali XFCE 2016.2 on the other. I want Kali for the networking side of things.
My desktop is still in limbo. I’m leaning towards CentOS 7. The desktop will mainly be for sharing 3TBs of an external drive space on the home network as storage. A place to store assorted media and do backups. I’ll come up with something before this weekend and a few days off.
You have to wonder where Ubuntu would be right now if it had stayed focused on the desktop. Ubuntu MATE has won lots of fans quickly. I came to Ubuntu just as they started to use Unity, and as bad as it is now, it was horrible then. But you could still load the classic gnome 2 desktop during that starting phase of Unity.
I tried CentOS a few times but was never satisfied with it, and you can break it with updates especially with added repos for codecs. Debian seemed much more stable to me. I have two Plex servers both running Xubuntu 16.04 without any issues.
I have tried so many distros over the years but always come back to Ubuntu/Mint. I like Debian as well, but not on the desktop. It is just too old when you run Stable and Testing and Sid were never stable enough for me. Ubuntu has the right mix of stability and newer apps especially if you upgrade LTS to LTS like I do. I don’t fool with in-between releases except for occasional testing.
Following this thread leaves me with “a question mark on my forehead” (as we say in German). While I am very pleased with all the reassuring praise for Ubuntu MATE, I am stunned that nobody challenges the thread initiator’s report about a seamless distro upgrade from 14.04 to 16.04. So far I had believed from what I had read all along that this is not possible because 14.04 was not an official flavor and hence is not in line with the rest of the family. This is why I stayed away from such a step and stayed on 14.04, given there is no urgency for change and a clean install from scratch seemed too much hassle in that case.
I admit I have not followed the proceedings of late, so I might have missed something (maybe to do with 16.04.1?). Can anyone set me straight?
They seem to have plans to discontinue it:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/google-will-discontinue-chrome-apps-for-windows-mac-and-linux-in-early-2018-507494.shtml
If it works, don’t break it. Though, if you’re really curious, you might want to make an image of your current system with clonezilla from USB or from a live session of the latest version, then give upgrading a try.
You don’t want 16.04 if you have an ATI / AMD graphics card, due to lacking driver support. There’s a thread about that somewhere around here, shouldn’t be hard to find if you’re looking for specifics.