Welcome Larry, take your time and read a bit about graphic card drivers here; particularly if you have an AMD GPU!:
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I’ll add my info, and thanks for such a welcoming and obviously intelligent community!
I’m Reid, from Maryland, and I’ve spent my career in the maritime world - most recently in the tug business. I’m an experienced Linux user but new to UbuntuMATE.
I just wanted to express my appreciation for those who created & maintain this excellent distro! It’s nearly perfect (for me, anyway) and I find myself saying an inward “thank you!” every day. I also use some others, including Ubuntu Unity, Mint, & Puppy (at present - I like to experiment) but UbuntuMATE is a daily runner I can depend on and be productive with - and it’s speedy & rock-solid, too.
Thanks again - I look forward to participating!
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Hey everyone. I’m Bill in Michigan USA and played with Linux for 2 decades but only as a hobby. When Ubuntu came along and raised the bar, it was easy to make the plunge - especially in the Windows Vista time frame. But it’s only been 4 years or so since I was dual booting. My work keeps me maintaining VMs for Microsoft compatibility at the moment.
At 62 I’ve been a EE (“hardware guy”) for 4 decades and really enjoy learning things while solving problems. I’ll jump in when I think I know something about a topic because helping others while learning things is probably what I enjoy the most.
My all-time favorite distro was Ubuntu 10.04 so Ubuntu-Mate is, of course, a natural for me. What these guys have done is like a blessing. 
EDIT: And oh yeah, I’m a big Compiz user and tweaker for productivity! Nothing beats a high res monitor with Enhanced Zoom Desktop - the best one around! I never liked Wobbly Windows but that cube is KoooOOOool!
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Hi everyone, I hope it’s not considered rude if I don’t give out my actual full name like so many of you have done so far. I guess it was always pushed into my head never to give out much personal info on the net much if it can be helped, though I usually share that tidbit and such with people I really get to know after a while. 
For now, I guess I’ll introduce myself as GLGamer, though “GL” is fine as a short nickname!
I thought I’d make an intro post here after my first post where I asked for some tech help, then inevitably managed to figure out what went wrong (and how to fix it better with some help from wolfman and lah7!) I’m around 32 years of age, live somewhere in the state of Ohio, and have been messing about in linux for about one of those years of my life roughly. When I use computers, it’s mostly to dabble around in artistic or creative stuff, or to play games and communicate with some online friends I have. I remember being fascinated by computers at a rather young age, but not knowing how to get into them, or what an OS even was for the longest time. I’d say my earliest experiences would be with Apple IIes (for games mostly of course) at elementary and middle schools, and eventually I’d get my own PC which would be a windows 3.1 machine. I’d stick with Windows up until 7, only vaguely knowing about apple/macs, and only a few years ago hearing something about Linux.
I started out dual-booting between Linux Mint Cinnamon and Windows Home Premium 7 last year, late spring I believe. It only took a while of a few short months or so before I decided to completely wipe out my Windows partition, and haven’t looked back since for myself Can’t say I miss it, save for a few games that aren’t as important as they used to be. I got into Ubuntu Mate this year sometime in the spring with the 14.04 LTS, then decided to try the 15.10 version. I’m now on 16.04 LTS, and I’ve been enjoying it more I think than even Linux Mint.
I guess I’ve always believed (once I realized what an OS was) that an OS should just be a tool for the most part, to help you get stuff done, and nothing to get fanatical or absolutely crazy about. And it’s also about preference. I just know so far that for me and some people in my household that Ubuntu Mate fits that role. And admittedly, aside from all the negative and such hype about later versions of Windows, and seeing what other people I know experience with it and such, I decided it wasn’t for me after all and wanted to try something different.
I’ve come to realize recently that I don’t mind, and actually enjoy learning stuff too, as long as it’s at my own pace. This holds true with what I’ve been learning to do in Linux so far, and what I’ve learned from using PCs in general, from how to handle a windows OS, to unlearning those practices that are not good to do in Linux, to how to even build my own PCs, and sort of trouble shoot them. I’d figure most of my computer knowledge is a sum of google, reading a bit, and making a fair amount of mistakes in the past and trying to correct them, while also learning from the more experienced. Hopefully less mistakes will be made in the future, and wisdom instead will be gained from the experienced and more reading!
Well, I’ll stop rambling now. I’ll say now I’m normally a shy, somewhat anxious person for various reasons, but I do look forward to getting to know some people here!
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Learning by trial and error is the way of Linux my friend. It’s certainly how I learned…
Welcome to the club!
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I can only quote what Steve said which hits the nail on the head!. 
Welcome to all newcomers!.
Hello all. My name is Corey. Whether part-time or full-time, I’ve worked in IT for 25 years. I’ve worked with all kinds of OSes (some of which have gone the way of the dodo) so jumping into something new is always intriguing. Recently, I’ve started tinkering with Raspberry Pi as a cheap home web development platform.
I hope to be able to answer at least as many questions as I ask and I look forward to getting to know the members of this community.
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Hi All,
Long time user of Ubuntu (since 6.06 LTS Dapper Drake). Just moved to Ubuntu MATE. Love it, so much more responsive. Looking forward to getting help with any issues. And if I can at any point help too.
Kind regards,
Simon.
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Hello all,
My name is Justin Horner and I’m a software engineer and UI/UX designer. I’ve been a software engineer for well over ten years and have been a lead UI/UX designer about four years.
I’m also a songwriter and former lead guitarist of Set For The Fall. I’ve been using Linux (many distros) since college and am very happy to have discovered the Ubuntu MATE community.
I’m here to contribute to Ubuntu MATE and make some friends in the community along the way
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Hello Justin and welcome man. Good to see you here.
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Nice music @justinhhorner!. I hope your Linux skills are as good!. (Only joking of course and welcome)
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Hello,
My name is TextChew. I’ve been using linux for about a year now, vey pleased at how well it works. So far, I’ve moved around from debian, mint, ubuntu, fedora, and antergos, but I’ve settled on ubuntu MATE 16.04 for right now. It works very well. 
I prefer to keep my privacy, (I’m even using tor right now) but hopefully that won’t matter at all. I’m eager to get involved in the ubuntu MATE community! 
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Hey There @TextChew,
Welcome to our growing community, please take the time to read Guide on posting.
As far as Tor goes, I do not care, but it could be that Discource (our platform) could have some issues with it. Whenever that happens, please contact one of us moderators and we will see what we can do.
Hi all My name is Asik Roy I’m a Doctor living in Chennai, India. An open source lover using linux as my daily driver. Enjoying ubuntu MATE… cheers from an indian user…I started using linux 8 years ago started on ubuntu as most users do stayed with it till 11.10 Unity was okay for me but i missed gnome 2 Then went to fedora and stayed there for around 3 years and it has been an wonderful experience there i installed mate and was enjoying it…then a year with arch and kde plasma was a wonderful learning curve, then hopped a lot in search a perfect distro for me and my laptop which was getting old according to current standards and in the end i found UM 5 months ago and i am well settled here… All the developers are lovely here in responding to queries and it forced me to join the community…Longlive UM…
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Hello everybody; My name is bill i live in the Selkirk mountains of British Columbia Canada and i just installed Mate a few days ago. Last year i started using Ubuntu on an old laptop and did ok but never felt totally at home. Finally a couple of weeks ago i bought a used Thinkpad T420 (nice) and ran some live distro sessions and settled on Mate 16.04. So far so good. most everything has gone without a hitch,well except for the dual boot grub window. I like uneventful and so far Ubuntu Mate 16.04 is doing just that.
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Hello there, I am:
Name: Roland
Age:25
Location: Gyor, Hungary
Family status: occupied
Study: business administration
Behaviour: peaceful solitary shy nut things
Language: english and hungarian
Software interest: anything related to business productivity
I am using Linux for 1,5 years, since starting it my life is changing so fast. Computer skills with me left the average level like crazy. With Mate I can handle things related to computers simply and personally. Doing it my own taught me also life skills like solving complex problems during the crazy learning curve which is needed to set foot on the land of Linux like a real linux guy not as someone who can’t install with console. Linux things allowed me to be more productive and nothing is more important than that for me which is the fruit of this miraculous open source community. Windows shall never return to me.
Fancy stuff drives me crazy after a while. Mate has precise manners and is a real guardian angel for desktops which allows the user to explore his/her own taste. I like it classic not fancy and the makers deserve world fame I think.
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Welcome!
I guess I never introduced myself either. Been here a few months now 
My name is Victor Kareh. I’m originally from Puerto Rico, currently living in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Married, 3 kids, not enough sleep.
Started using Linux back in the early noughts, with Red Hat 7.2 being my first successful install. Eventually fell in love with SuSE and convinced my entire grad school lab to make the switch. Mild success. Switched to Gentoo as a dual boot with Windows until Kubuntu first came out. Didn’t like it so I gave Ubuntu a try. As soon as Ubuntu started working reliably with my laptop’s WiFi, I pretty much ditched everything else (including Windows) and found my home. I’ve been using Ubuntu ever since until Unity was dropped earlier this year. Then found MATE and instantly fell in love.
By day I manage a small team of web developers making enterprise websites in javascript, by night I’m re-learning C and Python by hacking away at MATE, hoping to give back to this amazing community/team/project.
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Hello. I’ve been using linux since 2011. Being a nerd with too much time on his hands I have distrohopped a good part of the linux ecosystem. My old sweetheart was fuduntu, a fedora derivative with a customized gnome 2. I only enjoyed it for about 2 years before it got discontinued… then I went to crunchbang, and I ended up getting used to a custom i3 environment with arch/ debian as base.
Today I installed ubuntu mate, looking for a stable base that would save me the drudgery of setting up an i3 desktop from scratch (sound, keyboard layout, wireless applet, fn keys blah blah blah). Now, I must admit that the moment I got down customizing mate, I got hooked again. You’ve done a great job providing various desktop templates (I prefer the classic one, with the old menu). I also enjoyed the software boutique app (like what they did in bodhi, only much better). I think I might stay with mate for the time being… Sane, mature and complete, yet blessed with modern usability enhancements… Either you do tilingwm, or you don’t, in which case ubuntu mate seems like the best deal there is. Thank you for this.
Hi all.
I'm a GNU/Linux enthusiast from Serbia, working as a full stack Java dev, with strong emphasis on security. I started using Linux back in 2008, when I was a 16 year old script kiddie.
I've used Backtrack 3, 4, 5 (before Kali, before it was cool), but Ubuntu became my main everyday OS.
That year, I abandoned Windows and never looked back.
I was happy with Ubuntu until 2011, when they started this Unity and Gnome 3 disaster. Then I switched to Xubuntu and then to Ubuntu Mate (July 2014).
Few weeks ago, I decided to try classic Ubuntu 20.04, with Gnome, only to see integration with Google, Microsoft, Facebook and other companies I hate (I have a bottle of whiskey, reserved for the end of Microsoft). Then I became aware of the gnome-online-accounts package and it was a hard pass for me.
Then I learned that Canonical Livepatch depends on it and in an attempt to get rid of it, I switched to Debian Mate, but it just wasn't it. I couldn't get all of the indicators working, so I reverted back to Ubuntu Mate 20.04 amd64.
I've been using Ubuntu Mate for nearly 8 years, love it, but I would also like to remove some stuff I don't like (Livepatch), so I decided to come here to ask for little help.
I thought I'd resurrect this thread...
My name is Brian Bogdan and I am 59 years old. By day I am a Technical Support Agent with TELUS Health. I have worked there 15 years.
I started using Linux with Ubuntu 10.04. I did a wipe of Windows install and jumped in to Ubuntu with both feet. I recently switched to Ubuntu MATE with 22.04.
I keep an aquarium with a couple of goldfish and a plecostomus. I live in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, for the last 22 years before that from Springstein and also Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. I have one son of whom I am incredibly proud (27)