Installed mate-tweak but doesn't work

Support & Help Requests
#1

I just installed the Mate desktop on top of a minimal install of Ubuntu 14.04.4. I just tried to install mate-tweak, and while the installation went through, nothing happens when I try to open it. I basically just have an icon that looks like a desktop folder, and when I click on it there’s no response. Here’s the output I get when I try to open it from the terminal:

$ mate-tweak
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gi/overrides/Gtk.py:50: RuntimeWarning: You have imported the Gtk 2.0 module. Because Gtk 2.0 was not designed for use with introspection some of the interfaces and API will fail. As such this is not supported by the pygobject development team and we encourage you to port your app to Gtk 3 or greater. PyGTK is the recomended python module to use with Gtk 2.0
warnings.warn(warn_msg, RuntimeWarning)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/usr/bin/mate-tweak”, line 31, in
from gi.repository import Gdk, GdkPixbuf, Gio, GObject, Gtk, Notify
ImportError: cannot import name Notify

Is there something else I need to install to get it to work? I’d like to replace the current theme with Redmond in order to get rid of the top panel and maximize vertical space. Thanks.

EDIT: Here’s what I have installed so far …
mate-desktop-environment-core, mate-themes, mate-desktop-environment, mate-desktop-environment-extras

#2

Is there something else I need to install to get it to work?
When you login you must select the MATE environment - look for a selector on the right side of your login box above you userid; click on the Ubuntu logo and you should be presented with another option - a solid circle I believe.

My first go with MATE involved installing the desktop environment on top of Ubuntu 16.04. This install works but not really as well as my other install which was Ubuntu MATE 16.04 on a Dell laptop. I use the term rock solid to describe the Dell install. I’m waiting for the first point release to have the first install replaced.
My experience pointed me away from installing MATE desktop as an added environment to Ubuntu.

#3

Right now the system boots to a console, so I can’t choose among DE’s at login. I launch the GUI using the ‘startx’ command.

#4

Apparently it requires ubuntu-mate-desktop. I just installed it along with ubuntu-mate-core and mate-tweak now works. Unfortunately that means installing a whole lot of stuff that I don’t want.

#5

There are many folks posting here that have WAY more MATE experience than I … hopefully one of them will have an idea or 2 for you.

I have a virtual environment that I might be able to duplicate some of your symptoms. Can you be more specific about:

"installing a whole lot of stuff that I don't want" ?
32 or 64 bit?
“regular pc” [not power pc or mac]
Why are you using mini.iso?

#6

I didn’t spend a lot of time on mini builds, but here’s what I found.

Any reason for not using 16o4? 14o4 was a transition time when Mate had not yet become Ubuntu Mate.

1 Like
#7

Currently I’m on a 64-bit ThinkPad T60, but it’s really a test-case to work the kinks out before moving the operation onto my main machine, which is a T450s.

As for why I’m using the mini.iso, there’s a ton of software that comes built-into the the standard installation, and it’s almost all marked as dependencies (even stuff like Orca and Deja-Dup), so I wanted to try building from scratch and installing only what I need/use.

#8

Basically because 16.04 has this ongoing bug in network-manager that shows no signs of going away, and since 14.04.4 now ships with kernel 4.4, I thought I would take advantage of its established stability, especially since it’ll be supported for a few more years.

#9

As it turns out, the Ubuntu Mate minimal installation option on the 16.04 mini.iso is orders of magnitude simpler, and accomplishes pretty much everything I wanted.

2 Likes
#10

Hi
Can you please give a Link to the Bug report so we can know what it is?
Cheers

#11

I’ll have to find it, but in the meantime here’s a comment about it from /r/ubuntu:

DSMcGuire 6 points 5 days ago
The problem with the network manager is very much a pressing issue, it
seems to be (IIRC) a problem between Gnome, debian and Ubuntu and there
are loads of bugs reports issuing the problem.

EDIT: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bugs?field.tag=xenial