Hello, will there be any official way to go from 1.16 to 1.18 on Ubuntu MATE 16.04? I saw this article here: http://tipsonubuntu.com/2017/03/15/install-mate-desktop-1-18-in-ubuntu-16-04/
Or would the best bet be to use 17.04 / wait for 18.04. Stability is important for this particular setup.
Not a good idea, @terrowin
That article is misleading. It is in fact not installing anything on 16.04, by the simple fact the second command it runs is a full-upgrade which will raise your current Ubuntu MATE version. That is not what the article says it is doing on the title.
With 16.04 you can’t install the full gtk3 MATE 1.18. Either wait for the next LTS (which is what I am happily doing), or install 17.04 final or 17.10 alpha.
I don’t suggest you do it though. 17.10 is just around the corner (October) and introduces important improvements over 17.04 that you don’t want to miss . Installing 17.04 or the 17.10 alpha now, means an upgrade in only 2 months. I would instead suggest you wait for 17.10 final. And then install (do not upgrade!) over your current 16.04 version. Or, better yet, wait for the next LTS release right after 17.10.
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Thanks @marfig. I will also happily wait for the next LTS. I have already been exposed to 1.18 through another distro, which is why I kind of miss it.
I also had UM 17.04 installed not too long ago but I did encounter some issues with the mate-panel applets crashing, and the applet indicators not scaling correctly. All the more reason for me to wait a while in case some early issues are spotted and sorted out.
Since I installed 16.04 it has been smooth sailing though.
I tend to get antsy to distro hop every so often (which is part of why I’m using 16.04 now 
), but usually can satisfy that urge with testing new distros in Virtualbox. It’s a great way to test without breaking your main computer if your hardware can handle it.
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Well, you can use that PPA to get 1.18, just keep in mind that it’s unofficial, and you’ll have to contact the author directly if something goes wrong.
Also note that 1.18 is a GTK+3 release, so you might encounter some issues that were previously mentioned by users of 16.10 and 17.04.
Indeed. My bad. It's why I strongly dislike using certain GUI applications. Invariably I end up forgetting the command line -- I was associating the full-upgrade option with the do-release-upgrade command -- on commands that are far too important to forget about.
Thank you for the correction.