MATE Desktop 1.16 for Ubuntu MATE 16.04

Announcements
1

The Ubuntu MATE Patrons have already received this information, but here's an update for everyone.

A popular question in the Ubuntu MATE community among the 16.04 users is:

When can I get MATE Desktop 1.16 for Ubuntu MATE 16.04?

The answer is, now. Right now.

We've published a PPA containing MATE 1.16 that is designed to work with Ubuntu MATE 16.04. You can find out what changed in MATE Desktop 1.16 from the upstream release announcement.

You might be wondering why it has taken several months to release this PPA? Here's why; they've been well tested.

The packages in this PPA are derived from the MATE Desktop 1.16 packages that have been prepared for the upcoming Debian 9 (Stretch) release. Issues encountered in Debian have been fixed and we also waited for the all the MATE Desktop bugfix releases, so what you are getting today is actually MATE Desktop 1.16.1.

Upgrade to MATE Desktop 1.16.x

To upgrade Ubuntu MATE 16.04 to MATE Desktop 1.16.x do the following:

Open a terminal using CRTL + ALT + t.

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-mate-dev/xenial-mate
sudo apt update
sudo apt full-upgrade

Now restart your computer and you're running MATE Desktop 1.16.x :-)

Notes

Upgrading to MATE Desktop 1.16 will remove the mate-netspeed packages, but
don't be alarmed, the NetSpeed applet is now included in the mate-applets
package. You won't loose any functionality.

If you see the following prompt during the upgrade, then press Enter to accept [default=N]:

Configuration file '/etc/xdg/autostart/mate-volume-control-applet.desktop'
 ==> Deleted (by you or by a script) since installation.
 ==> Package distributor has shipped an updated version.
   What would you like to do about it ?  Your options are:
    Y or I  : install the package maintainer's version
    N or O  : keep your currently-installed version
      D     : show the differences between the versions
      Z     : start a shell to examine the situation
 The default action is to keep your current version.
*** mate-volume-control-applet.desktop (Y/I/N/O/D/Z) [default=N] ?

The version of MATE Desktop 1.16 in this PPA is mostly built against GTK2+ to ensure compatibility with Ubuntu MATE 16.04 and all the 3rd party MATE applets, plugins and extensions.

That said some applications have been transitioned to GTK3+ such as:

  • Engrampa
  • MATE Notification Daemon
  • MATE PolKit
  • MATE Session Manager
  • MATE Terminal

We hope you enjoy using MATE Desktop 1.16 on Ubuntu MATE 16.04!

16 Likes
2

Awesome news, and btw. it looks like the move to GTK3+ fixed the “dark grey on dark grey” look the scrollbars in MATE Terminal used to have with the default theme. :slight_smile:
Now you can finally see the scrollbar position properly.

2 Likes
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Fantastic news! I’m glad to see the PPA continuing.

A few early findings …

The mate-themes (>= 3) package appears to be missing from the PPA. When upgrading all the way from 16.04 LTS/Mate 1.12, this shows up as the dependency responsible for not upgrading mate-desktop-environment-core.

Is the PPA message now outdated in regards to GTK2+ and that small list of apps?

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Hmmm, mate-themes didn’t transition. Will fix a bit later.

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OK, I’d built the mate-themes but not published it. It’s copying now, should be all sorted in 30 mins.

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Got it! Good to catch it early. :grinning:

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Hi @Wimpy,

can I safely install this on UM 16.10 or is it already included?. :smiley:

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Hi @wolfman, it’s definitely for 16.04 Xenial only. In fact, there’s no Yakkety in the PPA so there’s nothing offered if someone did try it by mistake. Safeguards are nicely in place for this sort of thing.

I just tried to be sure. VMs are so handy! :slight_smile:

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As @Bill_MI says, it’s absolutely not compatible with Yakkety. Also Yakkety comes with MATE 1.16.

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Thanks chaps. I looked at UM 16.10 and as you said @Wimpy, 1.16 is already installed, I installed it on my mini notebook running UM 16.04 which didn’t blow up so I assume it works!. :thumbsup:

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Martin,

Just did the upgrade. Worked OK. Except 1 package did not upgrade tts-mscorefonts-installer.
From the message it seems it could not find or download the package to upgrade.

Please advise how to rectify this.

Alex

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See -

1 Like
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I did the Mate 1.16 upgrade this morning, and all went well.

The TTF-MS fonts issue is a problem even in 1.14. It seems to be a problem with Sourceforge. I need those fonts for a couple of wine based programs I run.

I keep a copy of MS Fonts I copied from a windows install I had on this laptop when I bought it. The easiest method for me has been to open caja from a terminal with sudo caja and copy them into /usr/share/fonts/truetype/

Then I update my font cash with fc-cache -f -v or reboot.

BTW thanks Wimpy for porting 1.16 to 16.04. I tried 16.10 and while I have plenty of system resources to run it, but it was a little glichie for my taste, so I went back to 16.04. This is still the best Distro I have used so far on a laptop. Have it installed on everyone’s laptops in the house. It just runs, is low maintenance, and is a fantastic tool for getting the job done with enough room to customize it to taste.

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If you’ve already tried to install the MS Fonts and gotten the download error, you can install them by running the following commands:

wget http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/contrib/m/msttcorefonts/ttf-mscorefonts-installer_3.6_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i ttf-mscorefonts-installer_3.6_all.deb

If you haven’t already tried to install the MS fonts, I think the above will fail due to a missing dependency.

It’s a known bug that’s reported in Launchpad. The main bug report, that I don’t think mentions the MS Fonts, is here.

If you’ve already installed the MS fonts that way, installing Mate 1.16 goes flawlessly.

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Thank you for this LTS love!

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Following this upgrade procedure had me panicking for a few minutes. After running the 3 commands I rebootet my Thinkpad and stared at a blinking text cursor instead of my login screen. First I thought, well, maybe some initialization is taking place, leave it alone. But after a while I decided this could not be the case. I forced power off, booted into recovery mode, then resumed normal mode from there and all was fine. Another reboot, this time without detour, worked fine. This is where I am now. Just to let everyone know.

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Looks like the 1.16 PPA is down

Error reading https://launchpad.net/api/1.0/~ubuntu-mate-dev/ppas: Service Temporarily Unavailable

Edit
Its back up.

1 Like
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The upgrade was flawless on Ubuntu MATE 16.04. I’m happy to see that the power manager brightness bug is also fixed. Thanks.

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Hi Guys, to a friend I have to remove Ubuntu 14.04 and install Ubuntu Mate 16.04, I have ISO image 16.04, I think it has the Mate desktop 1.12,

After updating the system, can I install the Mate 1.16 desktop without installing on the 1.14 desktop?

regards…

On my computer 1.16 desktop goes great, thank you …

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Hi @Josele13, I’ve done both successfully with this PPA on different 16.04 LTS installs:

Mate 1.12 -> 1.16 (by newly adding this PPA)
Mate 1.14 -> 1.16 (was already using this PPA from this older announcement)

A 16.04 install with Mate 1.14 likely already has this PPA and will be showing about 89 updates to get to Mate 1.16.

And yes, the 16.04 ISO is at Mate 1.12. Is this making sense?

But one of your questions is puzzling. Do you wish to stay at Mate 1.14? That isn’t as easy as the same PPA that got to Mate 1.14 has made the change to 1.16.