Why there is no updates of Mate Desktop to 18.04, and why there is no 4.18 kernel ?
Are you running an LTS release? You'll get no kernel updates on an LTS release unless you update the kernel yourself using UKUU or similar. Personally I've been running 16.04LTS and 1.18 using the latest NVIDIA drivers for months now...
I see in System Monitor Ubuntu Mate 18.04.2 LTS, but I only have Mate Desktop 1.20.1 and kernel 4.15.0-45.
Mate Desktop 1.20 was released on febrary 2018 and is really outdated, and now all Ubuntu flavors are running 4.18 kernel which come with extra drivers from Canconical.
Ukuu or manual install gives you only the kernel without those extra drivers.
sudo apt-get install --install-recommends linux-generic-hwe-18.04 xserver-xorg-hwe-18.04
Don't see why it would be any different...I'm not home to try but I will once I am home.
Thanks this solved the kernel problem, but how can we use latest Mate Desktop apps inside 18.04.2 ?
I think the confusion here, is that it was heavily implied by Canonical that all desktop users would automatically get upgraded to the new hardware enablement stack. The fact that this did not happen is a big surprise.
But on this very site, it was revealed that Ubuntu MATE 18.04.2 would include a new point release to MATE that would include additional security fixes. This didn't happen, and the blog post was not updated to mention the status of this.
Worse, there isn't even an official release announcement on the Ubuntu MATE site for 18.04.2, and the one that Canonical links to in the overall 18.04.2 release notification just links to an older article from April.
Don't get me wrong, I understand the developers are busy and have lives outside of this distribution. But Canonical advertising that everyone would be upgraded automatically to the new hardware enablement, coupled with the blog post here promising a new MATE point release that never shipped, along with a missing release announcement, it's no wonder why there's confusion.
In addition, the download page for Ubuntu MATE still mentions 18.04.1 as the latest release...
I mean no offense to anyone with this post. I just think the inconsistency is strange for a distribution known for having some of the greatest polish and attention to detail compared to most others.
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I haven't heard of this - have you got a link to this source?
I've always known HWE to be an optional "opt-in" from existing LTS installations. Which kernel version it is based on a timeline.
I just updated the links for 18.04.2. Oops, thanks for reminding me! Announcements wise, there isn't usually one for point releases unless there's something significant.
We'll need to wait for an update from @Wimpy, our leader. He collaborates with the upstream MATE team and manages the packaging and SRUs.
My guess is that the new 1.20.2 packages are stuck in a SRU approval queue, as we can see Caja for example is available in Bionic (18.04)'s proposed. You can go to Software & Updates under "Developer Options" to enable Pre-released updates but take caution as this is supposed to be for testing, it could wreck your installation!
There's also the possibility someone in the community could put together a PPA with the updated packages.
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Hi lah7,
Thank you for taking the time to respond.
I wish I did - I read about that back when 18.04 was in beta. I don't have my browser history from back then. Prior to April 2018, it was mentioned that HWE would be handled differently in 18.04. Specifically, server editions would be opt-in for HWE, while the desktop spins would get the new HWE automatically. Now it seems that this decision was reversed, but I wasn't aware of this.
I think that's fair and make sense. However, Canonical did include a link to an Ubuntu MATE 18.04.2 release announcement when announcing the release, and it just links to the original 18.04 article. That may confuse people, it did me.
Thanks again.
Drivers are all built into the kernel, hence the term monolithic kernel.
You can't update the kernel without updating the drivers.
I found Ubuntu release mode not practical for Desktop user. For server users it makes sense to have stable LTS with all well tested packages, but for Desktop users there is nothing that forbid them to use all 18.10 new apps in 18.04, because Desktop users want to have always new apps and keep with LTS. And the six months release strategy is really stupid and not practical in my point of view, and the cause of it is Canonical which forces that plan on others, but why others distributions like Mate applies the same strategy to their own desktop apps ? Something is needed to be modified.
Not intending to start a flame war--but we find LTS releases most satisfactory for desktop. The difference is we don't have one desktop--but users company-wide. So, I disagree with the server-only statement.
It is not practical to upgrade every desktop every six months. Users hate it--they just want it to work, so they can get their job done--and the want it to work exactly the way it has been working. No controls in a different place. No different look or feel. Nor is it at all safe to allow everyone to do their own upgrades whenever they feel like it--that would be a support nightmare.
We used 12.04 until 18.04 came out. And moved to Mate entirely because it was simple and could be configured to look and feel similarly to the 10.04 and 12.04 releases they were used to.
This was long ago, but now there is big rule that applies to every tech : "Change or Die !". The number of home users of Mate supasses a lot those used in companies because in enterprise desktop world Windows rules them all (Thanks to Microsoft Office), and Linux (bare) rules servers. It's simple equation, and the solution is clear to make Mate desktop more attractive to users.
The LTS release strategy is perfect for desktop/laptops. The only issue is the applications themselves. This is the reason that Canonical came up with Snap packages. User-space applications don't belong with the system-level package manager.
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Windows dominates the desktop due solely to the fact it's the OS force installed on the device by default when people buy it. Windows most certainly doesn't dominate the desktop because it's a great OS.
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It's not the os that is great but the applications that work on it, some people cannot work without Microsoft Office, Adobe products and other products.
I recall myself trying to use Libreoffice to write docx files, but when I shared them with my friends and they open them with Microsoft Office they found garbages, that's why me and other people will always have dual boot Ubuntu/Windows to use those widely used products and keep interoperability between us.
Which is solely an issue with MS Office. Docx is an ISO standard, ISO standards exist solely for the reason of maintaining compatibility across suites. You can transfer docx documents between Libre Office and WPS office all day without a single compatibility issue, get MS Office involved and everything breaks - That highlights an issue with MS Office, not the alternative suites. In fact compatibility issues exist between differing versions of MS Office itself! The fact is, when it comes to ISO standards, Libre Office is actually more compatible than MS Office, MS Office is simply the least compatible office suite marketed as the most compatible office suite, and people actually fall for such marketing.
Windows is literally the McDonalds of operating systems. It's not the best, it's not the worst. It caters to that great big marketing hump on the bell curve.
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That's definitely not true at all. I've written four professionally published books with LibreOffice, and the process involved sending the documents back and forth between myself and my publisher (who uses MS Office). We had no interoperability problems whatsoever. It is true that LibreOffice had compatibility issues with MS Office towards the beginning but that isn't true today. The truth is, dual-booting Windows and Linux isn't necessary at all. I haven't had to do that for many years. I get all my work done on Linux without any sacrifices at all.
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There is lot of issues with Libreoffice; for example if I try to open some docx written with Microsoft Office containing equations written with MathType, the document is not usable at all because all equations are distorted. And if the docx document contains some EMF images (because Microsoft Office blocks eps/svg for security reasons) generated for example from Geogebra those figures are not recognized and not displayed at all inside Writer.
And the biggest issue with Libreoffice is the sudden crash, you will never when or why or how Writer crashed, especially when working with large documents.
I don't have any experience with Mathtype or Geogebra, so I can't comment on that part. However, my most recent book was 400+ pages and while writing it, I didn't experience a single crash at any point. It's definitely stable.
I use Libre Office daily for the running of my business, no issues with crashing or compatibility whatsoever. Perhaps you should stop saving everything as docx and start making use of odf?
Once again, the issue isn't alternate office suites, the issue is MS Office and most likely the use of a third party add-in called mathtype. You can't complain about Office compatibility using a proprietary add-in!
Mathtype is now seamlessly integrated into Google Docs. Millennials love Google Docs, only oldies use MS Office these days.