Well, the beauty of Linux is that if you can't find what you want, you are free to make it yourself! Not an insignificant undertaking for sure, but you couldn't get to square one if you tried it with Apple or Microsoft! 
1 Like
"L'union fait la force!" => "Together we are invincible!"
I just answered the original comment from Marius and his need not changing anything.
I am definitely not dismissive about AntiX. I like it and I just think it is more suitable for his needs. I did not write âdo not use itâ but that he can use it, so I donât know why you think I am dismissive.
AntiX is the distro that changes anything. I does not use systemd, wayland, you cannot use flatpaks and snaps there. So I say it is more suitable for him. I still see it as a protest distro because of lack of development and maybe less usability in the future because the world moves somewhat different way.
I am happy with GNOME, it is perfectly usable for me.
The interface of Ubuntu Mate keeps changing for the better, mainly the subtle ones such as how texts look on screen. That's why I'm sticking to Ubuntu Mate. However, the snap store is such a disappointment: hardly any usable software there. I personally use VirtualBox, RedBook etc on a regular basis. An OS eco system should be judged by how much usable software packages are readily available. Working people need to get things done in their lives!
4 Likes
Welcome, @Harry_Tong to the community!
Thank you all. So we can conclude that ubuntu will not become "windows".
I just have to have patience to update to the next LTS only when current LTS is deprecated, NOT Sooner!
That is exactly how to avoid the "bleeding edge"!
I just upgraded to 22.04 LTS from 20.04 LTS myself. NB - upgrade, not fresh install.
Even then, I had a few minor things to do with my Login Screen background image, which revealed greeter issues. Also, the change in "supported" themes led me to learn to customize and install a theme different from what I had. And lastly, I can't seem, for the life of me, to get rid of the Gnome Footprint Icon where my MATE Brisk Icon should be. But I've given up on that one and going to live with it until I do a fresh install at the next LTS bump.
But those are, in the end, minor hiccups, even if they get under your skin.
Brisk menu tries to display the start-here-symbolic icon from your icon theme.
3 Likes
I had tried that previously, to no avail.
----- start edit -----
I used the icon from:
/usr/share/icons/Radiant-MATE/places/22/start-here-symbolic-mate.svg
I then placed it here:
----- end of edit -----
/usr/share/icons/Humanity-Dark/places/22/start-here-symbolic.svg
However, this time, when I did the switch, still with SVG, it gave me only a single-colored bleached-green roundel.
I even created a "places/scalable" directory with the SVG file in it, and that was still ignored.
Apparently, for me, the SVG file is not accepted for the Brisk menu.
So I decided to convert it from SVG to a PNG, and that worked, but, because it was so small, I resized it to 32. Also, it still needed to be in the "places/22" directory, and now all is good.
Thank you, @ironfoot.
4 Likes
I tried many distros on my wifeâs 11 years old laptop. AntiX is clearly the winner in terms of performance. Second one is a distro with GNOME (Debian a bit more performant than Ubuntu). KDE experience was similar to GNOME. Surprisingly, the slowest and least usable were âlightweightâ flavors like Lubuntu, Linux Lite, Ubuntu Mate. I think GNOME and KDE do something better with utilization of the GPU.
Yes, GNOME and KDE are considered heavier than for example Mate, but it does not mean the computer is slower and less usable. This experience was surprising for me.
@ratatoskr ubuntu mate 22.04 is slow on dell E6500 just like win 11 is extremely slow on dell M4800... What are the flavors with gnome and KDE that you tested?
Which is the very reason I for my part departed from Ubuntu in April this year and so far settled for Debian
We need (and especially Android) a system setting that effectively says "It works fine now, stop F'king with it!" that only allows "upgrades" that are security patches.
Remember: "Different is not better, only better is better."
1 Like
@wally333 on the same note, we need marketing free products for better lifes but we will never have them... sadly...
1 Like
"Thoughts and feedback", eh? Well, if you please...
- Open source is elitist in its essence because it gives the real freedom to programmers and/or software developers only. Well, how many of them are there? An average user is basically incapable to bend open sourced OS/software to his own will by his own means.
- Contemporary OS kernels, drivers and whatnot, Desktop Environments, Office suites, Browsers, etc. are so complex and large that a single developer is incapable to tweak them all to his own liking.
- We can easily observe that strong leadership is common enough in successful FOSS projects. It is pretty obvious that the best live and stable projects follow industrial practice in development and management.
- All in all that leads to some conclusions:
- An average user can only embrace (or not) what FOSS delivers.
- It is impossible to listen to every user and comply with every of users' requests (including mutually exclusive ones).
- Those who manage development (not necessarily developers themselves) decide.
- FOSS management often tries to compete with commercial $oftware, mimics it and follows 'change for the sake of a change', 'newer is better', etc. marketing (potentially detrimental) principles.
1 Like
It was Ubuntu MATE 22.04, then GNOME Ubuntu 24.04 and Debian 12 GNOME. KDE I tested with Tuxedo OS 3 (Plasma 6), which i like very much. The other ones were Linux Lite, Lubuntu, Peppermint (that one was also good) and probably some others.
It depends what you want. If you need low energy consumption (for example for battery life), definitely use low-intensive DE. If you donât care that much about energy even on older computer, definitely give GNOME or KDE a try and then compare what works better, if an âold DEâ or a modern one. âHeavierâ definitely doesnât mean slower, what I thought before.
On my newer laptop from 2022, everything is snappy, GNOME eye-candy looks great and MATE saves battery 
But I prefer GNOME now.
@ratatoskr I want the speed of mate 14.04 on my E6500 dell. The hardware is good, very litle used in the past 8 years :). To switch to Debian seems like a whole new teritory for me.
I like mate because it auto installs all drivers and you have an os out of the box. So, if the install is slow or the iso is big because of this it is understandable. But the slowlines...
I switched to Ubuntu MATE because I like the basic user interface. For the same reason, in the Windows environment, I've stuck with Windows 7 and avoided the 10/11 upgrade.
I've now been through probably half a dozen Ubuntu MATE version upgrades, and my UI still looks the same. And I haven't noticed a significant decrease in performance, though my computer is only 11 years old and has dual Opteron CPUs with combined 12 cores, so maybe that's why I don't see much performance change.
The site on which we are communicating is Ubuntu MATE Community. Are those who are saying the OS is getting worse referring to MATE or the underlying OS?
2 Likes
@guyr I use Mate for the same reason. I started using it (14.04) with dual core 2.6 and 3.3 ghz and 4gb of rams and hdd.
Now, on thinkpad p52 i7 8850 with ssd and 32 gb of ram it is decent but on precision m4800 i7 4800 hdd 7200 rpm and 32 gb it is slow (not to mention how slow it is on the dual core with 4 gb and hdds). I guess because of the ssds the current OS has more stuff in it making it slow on hdds.
I guess this because also laravel, because of octane and opcache, has more overhead (which is not used by many anyway) that makes the app slower when used without opcache and octane.
Is just like driving your car with the trunk full of things you don't need/use that make the car heavier and slower, so that you are tempted to buy a new car with more engine torque (NOT Power!) to keep the car as fast as the old one with the trunk empty.
4 Likes