My opinion of ubuntu mate and the ubuntu base

I am using on and off ubuntu mate from 14.04 (before the oficial release). I did some bug reports and translations for ubuntu mate along the time . Considering that we determined from the start that i am not just a simple user let’s get in to my opinons.


                          Mate (interface)
                                -pros-

familiar
easy to use
customizable

                                  -cons-

feels outdated (now there are out there some interfaces that offers great applets, modern control center ect)
no new dev’s that want to help and create applets or upgrade parts of the interface (and now some of you will say that it’s not the mate dev’s work to try to Energize users with some experiance or that they are x amount of dev that are in the mate team and they dont need any more and that’s why you are rong ).


About the port to gtk 3 it’s the right move, why? again there are some many DE out there that offers much more then mate at this point of time.
On the other side they are pushing to fast the port and from what i found they have so many problems with the applets, 2 of them are not usable at this moment. And because of that until 18.04 mate will not be stable and in some cases not usable. Why that long? Because from what i see there are 2-3 users that reports bugs for ubuntu mate and another 10-15 on mate github page . They are enough? NO.


                     Ubuntu (Base)

I respect ubuntu for what it was and what he has done in the past.
But now it’s not the case, we all know that xx.0x lts in this case 16.04 it’s not a stable release by far and 16.04.1 was what we did hope for in the first case. They are now in the phone/tablet industry and they forgotten why they did start in the first place with the ubuntu project.
No inovation, no more stable releases, no more nothing. In the past the small projects like ubuntu mate, xubuntu etc they they stood on the shoulders of the ubuntu project but now the roles are reversed.
Small projects inovate and brings fixes to the ubuntu base , because of them the linux world have new users every day, new dev’s and so on.
I know that some of you dont like Linux Mint because they dont respect the “code” of security etc, But right now they ofer more stability of the system like nobody else .


                       Ubuntu Mate

A project that has a great team but ho lacks power users, coders and testers.
A project that inovates by making apps that are friendly to users and offers a small advantage over other distro’s.
But because of the 2 projects that it’s base on ubuntu mate will not become what we know all it can be. Because they have the ubuntu time line to respect and waiting for the other project to fix the DE problems
In my opinion if ubuntu mate will be only a lts (like mint) or a rolling release they will have soo much more time to make what we all aspect from a great project
In the past there was a discution about the 32 bit version and the posibility to kill it in the feature. I feel like this is the same problem with the windows xp and what all the world postpone (more ram, bigger hdd amd so on).

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I kind of agree with you that we need more testers.
I also agree with you regarding the host of trouble inherited from the Ubuntu base.

However, I don’t feel pessimistic about the future.

Despite the Upstream problems, something based on Ubuntu is the best bet for new users IMO, and among the Ubuntu offerings, I think Ubuntu MATE is the best option.

While I’m at it, I’d like to thank you @APolihron for the awesome work you’ve been doing testing 16.10 and filing all those bug reports for the past few weeks.

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I have tested just about every major Linux distro out there either on bare metal or in a vm.

Ubuntu Mate has its little niggles to be sure and, at the start of 16.04, those niggles were quite big. However, they have now been largely ironed out. All other distros have their problems too and, on balance, I have yet to find one with as few as Ubuntu Mate.

In other words, I am not with Ubuntu Mate out of loyalty. I am with it because it is the most customisable and most reliable Linux distro available to me. Not to mention, it has access to the Ubuntu repositories of software.

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Hallo

First of all, to all those who work in/on the project - thank you for your time and your talent.

If I were a programmer I would contribute to Ubuntu-Mate; I’m not, so I can’t.

The bottom line is “getting the job done”, with a tool. When we need to spin-up a linux machine in a VM at work we now use Ubuntu-Mate 16.04.1. It gets the job done, eficiently, without fuss, and is easy for “windoze” and “fruit” visitors to understand.

It is important that some people, who posess the knowledge and expertise take a look at the current situation of development and provide “constructive criticism”. This only helps to keep things evolving. :slight_smile:

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Maybe some of us don’t want widgets. Hadn’t that occur to you?

If you want widgets that badly, install the awful mess that is gscreenlets. I’ve had fun with it in the past myself, but ultimately it ended up being a stupid little toy that I didn’t need.

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@alpinejohn @ouroumov Thank you but i am a simple user with alot of spare time . If you whant to give thanks to some one give it to @Wimpy and the dev team.
@tiox you use applets all the time, from the time applet to the wifi, sound,network and so on.
“Screenlets are mini-applications (widgets) you can use on your desktop to “improve the usability and eye-candy of the modern composited Linux-desktop”.
" An applet is any small application that performs one specific task that runs within the scope of a dedicated widget engine or a larger program, often as a plug-in” that you can put on the panel/panels and NOT ON YOU DESKTOP LIKE Screenlets

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@APolihron I think you love kde or cinnamon, ya they are great DEs and offer a lot but they become buggy a lot with new releases now cinnamon and plasma are stable but they took a long time and lot of releases to come to current state even Gnome took twenty releases and still gnome has something lacking…But MATE according to me is much stable around releases(personal opinion and thanks to gnome2 base) and gtk3 swithcing is also going good when compared to qt switches kde had again personal opinion and finally according to me MATE is amazingly lightweight even comparable to xfce and it is not a barebone left for the user to customise. so according to me MATE is also offering something to me which other DEs lacked and it may lack some great things other DEs offer but once gtk3 swithcing is complete hopefully cinnamon applets can be made to work with mate(i dont know whether it can be done or not)… ubuntu base i think still ubuntu is the best distro base available which is striking a good balance between satability and bleeding edge…Arch and fed are bleeding edge and debian is too frozen but most stable may be opensuse is good but it never worked for me rest all distros are mostly based on ubuntu… Mint is very good but it is good to have options and that late update issue with firefox was with LMDE and they have openly explained everything they are providing the best ubuntu based distro out there once i chose mate when i was using arch and my laptop was old and searched for best mate based distro fedora mate i used it before i was in arch then i tried UM and LM mate version liked UM a lot bcoz of its snappiness and i started using it now around 6 months and still cant find any reason to drop it UM just works as does Mint…

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I think the issue that needs to be addressed here, is the low man power of developers. In my opinion this is a common problem of project forking at the linux world. First we had gnome, then we had gnome, unity, cinnamon and mate. What if the developers of the different teams worked together on some basic projects. For example would be possible for the developers of mate and cinnamon to work together and make panel applets in a way that with little work (or none at all) be able to function at both mate and cinnamon panel? Wouldn’t be nice if mate and cinnamon developers worked together in order to create a new window manager/compositor with wayland support that works both for mate and cinnamon? (gnome and kde will have rock solid stable wayland sessions within the next year and as far as I know mate, cinnamon haven’t started yet any wayland work and they have a long way to cover until they catch up). I don’t know… just wishful thinking…

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I dont love a specific DE . i use the one that gets the job done.

I booted the 16.04.1 live iso. Panels didn’t load. I rebooted and panels did load in live session. I also had Ethernet connection in live session. I installed, but couldn’t get Ethernet connection (panels did load correctly).

I rebooted the live iso. Panels didn’t load. I did a reinstall by clicking the install icon on the desktop. After this second installation I had Ethernet connection (maybe because I installed updates while installing).

I started to customize my installation. I love Welcome/Boutique and for a couple of hours I thought this is the perfect distro.

Then I logged out and back in again. Panel (I had only one) did load, but was unresponsive. Ctrl+Alt+Del made it possible to restart. After rebooting my panel was still unresponsive. It showed at the bottom of the screen, but if I clicked at the top of the screen (there was nothing there), I could access panel settings.

So I moved the panel to the top and I don’t remember if the panel became responsive or if I had to Ctrl+Alt+Del to escape 16.04.1. I blame the Xenial base and won’t use it. It might work great, but trust is gone. A panel staying unresponsive between restarts is a serious issue. Now I am tired. I don’t want to blame UM devs because they work night and day. But I think they are building a shiny castle on sand (the Xenial base).

Bad burn? Checksum?

Not finding any bug reports.

Really? :thinking:

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I started using ubuntu mate with 14.04 mostly as I’ve always liked the simple desktop mate offers.As far as bugs I’ve been using computers since pre windoze 95 days and have yet to find a system that when released doesn’t have a few bugs to work out.Mate has really impressed me as I’ve posted a few times before.I recently installed 16.10 on this computer which was built in 2005 it’s showing it’s age and I’m sure it’s a matter of time before it dies.The main error which has appeared on every version I’ve installed with mate seems to be bluetooth related I don’t use it so once I removed it the problem went away.As far as the panel I set all the apps on the top panel delete the bottom panel then move the top panel to the bottom as in the old days of gnome.Most of the bugs with this version seem to related to the new gtk change and I’m sure they will be worked out in time.As far as 16.04 it’s an lts version so most bugs will be if not already worked out I had no major problems with it but I enjoy installing new systems.I can’t say thank you enough to everyone who works on ubuntu mate and in my opinion it’s a very stable easy out of the box system for new and older users.

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In my point of view UM 16.04 is a real masterpiece in the world of Linux. Fast, stable, lucid. Whoever worked for it, thanks a bunch.

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I woud just like to point out this line;

Excuse me? I think you'd have to be a power user to utilize fully anything that isn't Windows, and especially to do half the crap I've been writing about.

Ultimately, it comes down to this; We the Power Users that seem to be lacking so much are trying our hearts out, bleeding passion all over the ground to bring more converts into the Linux world, and most of the users we bring want something that just works. They don't care to increase their power level and become over 9000, they just want to turn the damn machine on and use the web without their browser or system being the bottleneck in their use experience on whatever beater of a PC these people end up using.

Not everybody that comes into our world will ever be a power user. Most likely. they'll be people who got a virus with Windows and want something to replace Windows with because they're too cheap to either upgrade their PC or install a superior version of Microsoft Windows.

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Verified ISO after download and was using two different USB-sticks.

After initial shaky experience, it has been better.

I have now encountered this problem also in PCLinuxOS LXDE. It is a Compiz problem.

Compiz is needed for smooth Youtube playback in Chrome (Marco no good) in both UM 16.04 and PCLOS MATE.

I am using AMD open source driver so it might be that newer versions of this driver don’t work well with my system. I have AMD Radeon HD 6320 (APU).

I use the AMD R7200 GPU with the open source driver and I use my own version of Compton with Marco.

That is to say, I have Mate-Tweak set to Marco with no compositing.

Then I set Compton to load independently at bootup. I also have my own compton.conf file stored in:

/home/username/.config

If you want to try out my setup, my compton.conf file’s content is:

#################################
#
# Backend
#
#################################

# Backend to use: "xrender" or "glx".
# GLX backend is typically much faster but depends on a sane driver.
backend = "glx";

#################################
#
# GLX backend
#
#################################

glx-no-stencil = true;

# GLX backend: Copy unmodified regions from front buffer instead of redrawing them all.
# My tests with nvidia-drivers show a 10% decrease in performance when the whole screen is modified,
# but a 20% increase when only 1/4 is.
# My tests on nouveau show terrible slowdown.
# Useful with --glx-swap-method, as well.
glx-copy-from-front = false;

# GLX backend: Use MESA_copy_sub_buffer to do partial screen update.
# My tests on nouveau shows a 200% performance boost when only 1/4 of the screen is updated.
# May break VSync and is not available on some drivers.
# Overrides --glx-copy-from-front.
# glx-use-copysubbuffermesa = true;

# GLX backend: Avoid rebinding pixmap on window damage.
# Probably could improve performance on rapid window content changes, but is known to break things on some drivers (LLVMpipe).
# Recommended if it works.
# glx-no-rebind-pixmap = true;


# GLX backend: GLX buffer swap method we assume.
# Could be undefined (0), copy (1), exchange (2), 3-6, or buffer-age (-1).
# undefined is the slowest and the safest, and the default value.
# copy is fastest, but may fail on some drivers,
# 2-6 are gradually slower but safer (6 is still faster than 0).
# Usually, double buffer means 2, triple buffer means 3.
# buffer-age means auto-detect using GLX_EXT_buffer_age, supported by some drivers.
# Useless with --glx-use-copysubbuffermesa.
# Partially breaks --resize-damage.
# Defaults to undefined.
glx-swap-method = "undefined";

#################################
#
# Shadows
#
#################################

# Enabled client-side shadows on windows.
shadow = true;
# Don't draw shadows on DND windows.
no-dnd-shadow = true;
# Avoid drawing shadows on dock/panel windows.
#no-dock-shadow = true;
# Zero the part of the shadow's mask behind the window. Fix some weirdness with ARGB windows.
clear-shadow = true;
# The blur radius for shadows. (default 12)
shadow-radius = 5;
# The left offset for shadows. (default -15)
shadow-offset-x = -5;
# The top offset for shadows. (default -15)
shadow-offset-y = -5;
# The translucency for shadows. (default .75)
shadow-opacity = 0.5;

# Set if you want different colour shadows
# shadow-red = 0.0;
# shadow-green = 0.0;
# shadow-blue = 0.0;

# The shadow exclude options are helpful if you have shadows enabled. Due to the way compton draws its shadows, certain applications will have visual glitches
# (most applications are fine, only apps that do weird things with xshapes or argb are affected).
# This list includes all the affected apps I found in my testing. The "! name~=''" part excludes shadows on any "Unknown" windows, this prevents a visual glitch with the XFWM alt tab switcher.
shadow-exclude = [
    "! name~=''",
    "name = 'Notification'",
    "name = 'Plank'",
    "name = 'Docky'",
    "name = 'Kupfer'",
    "name = 'xfce4-notifyd'",
    "name *= 'VLC'",
    "name *= 'compton'",
    "name *= 'Chromium'",
    "name *= 'Chrome'",
    "name *= 'Firefox'",
    "class_g = 'Conky'",
    "class_g = 'Kupfer'",
    "class_g = 'Synapse'",
    "class_g ?= 'Notify-osd'",
    "class_g ?= 'Cairo-dock'",
    "class_g ?= 'Xfce4-notifyd'",
    "class_g ?= 'Xfce4-power-manager'"
];
# Avoid drawing shadow on all shaped windows (see also: --detect-rounded-corners)
shadow-ignore-shaped = false;

#################################
#
# Opacity
#
#################################

menu-opacity = .9;
inactive-opacity = .9;
active-opacity = 1;
frame-opacity = .9;
inactive-opacity-override = false;
alpha-step = 0.06;

# Dim inactive windows. (0.0 - 1.0)
# inactive-dim = 0.2;
# Do not let dimness adjust based on window opacity.
# inactive-dim-fixed = true;
# Blur background of transparent windows. Bad performance with X Render backend. GLX backend is preferred.
# blur-background = true;
# Blur background of opaque windows with transparent frames as well.
# blur-background-frame = true;
# Do not let blur radius adjust based on window opacity.
blur-background-fixed = false;
blur-background-exclude = [
    "window_type = 'dock'",
    "window_type = 'desktop'"
];

#################################
#
# Fading
#
#################################

# Fade windows during opacity changes.
#fading = true;
# The time between steps in a fade in milliseconds. (default 10).
fade-delta = 4;
# Opacity change between steps while fading in. (default 0.028).
fade-in-step = 0.03;
# Opacity change between steps while fading out. (default 0.03).
fade-out-step = 0.03;
# Fade windows in/out when opening/closing
# no-fading-openclose = true;

# Specify a list of conditions of windows that should not be faded.
fade-exclude = [ ];

#################################
#
# Other
#
#################################

# Try to detect WM windows and mark them as active.
mark-wmwin-focused = true;
# Mark all non-WM but override-redirect windows active (e.g. menus).
mark-ovredir-focused = true;
# Use EWMH _NET_WM_ACTIVE_WINDOW to determine which window is focused instead of using FocusIn/Out events.
# Usually more reliable but depends on a EWMH-compliant WM.
use-ewmh-active-win = true;
# Detect rounded corners and treat them as rectangular when --shadow-ignore-shaped is on.
detect-rounded-corners = true;

# Detect _NET_WM_OPACITY on client windows, useful for window managers not passing _NET_WM_OPACITY of client windows to frame windows.
# This prevents opacity being ignored for some apps.
# For example without this enabled my xfce4-notifyd is 100% opacity no matter what.
detect-client-opacity = true;

# Specify refresh rate of the screen.
# If not specified or 0, compton will try detecting this with X RandR extension.
refresh-rate = 0;

# Set VSync method. VSync methods currently available:
# none: No VSync
# drm: VSync with DRM_IOCTL_WAIT_VBLANK. May only work on some drivers.
# opengl: Try to VSync with SGI_video_sync OpenGL extension. Only work on some drivers.
# opengl-oml: Try to VSync with OML_sync_control OpenGL extension. Only work on some drivers.
# opengl-swc: Try to VSync with SGI_swap_control OpenGL extension. Only work on some drivers. Works only with GLX backend. Known to be most effective on many drivers. Does not actually control paint timing, only buffer swap is affected, so it doesn’t have the effect of --sw-opti unlike other methods. Experimental.
# opengl-mswc: Try to VSync with MESA_swap_control OpenGL extension. Basically the same as opengl-swc above, except the extension we use.
# (Note some VSync methods may not be enabled at compile time.)
vsync = "opengl-swc";

# Enable DBE painting mode, intended to use with VSync to (hopefully) eliminate tearing.
# Reported to have no effect, though.
dbe = false;
# Painting on X Composite overlay window. Recommended.
paint-on-overlay = true;

# Limit compton to repaint at most once every 1 / refresh_rate second to boost performance.
# This should not be used with --vsync drm/opengl/opengl-oml as they essentially does --sw-opti's job already,
# unless you wish to specify a lower refresh rate than the actual value.
sw-opti = false;

# Unredirect all windows if a full-screen opaque window is detected, to maximize performance for full-screen windows, like games.
# Known to cause flickering when redirecting/unredirecting windows.
# paint-on-overlay may make the flickering less obvious.
unredir-if-possible = true;

# Specify a list of conditions of windows that should always be considered focused.
focus-exclude = [ ];

# Use WM_TRANSIENT_FOR to group windows, and consider windows in the same group focused at the same time.
detect-transient = true;
# Use WM_CLIENT_LEADER to group windows, and consider windows in the same group focused at the same time.
# WM_TRANSIENT_FOR has higher priority if --detect-transient is enabled, too.
detect-client-leader = true;

#################################
#
# Window type settings
#
#################################

wintypes:
{
    tooltip =
    {
        # fade: Fade the particular type of windows.
        fade = true;
        # shadow: Give those windows shadow
        shadow = false;
        # opacity: Default opacity for the type of windows.
        opacity = 0.85;
        # focus: Whether to always consider windows of this type focused.
        focus = true;
    };
};

Open a Pluma file and paste the above into it and then save as “compton.conf” in your .config folder. Then when you run Compton, it will use this conf file.

1 Like

Thanks @stevecook172001 !

I didn’t try your Compton configuration, but I switched to Compton in MATE Tweak.

It made a huge difference:
My panel doesn’t jump up and down during login.
My desktop/panel doesn’t become unresponsive.
(Chrome works well.)

In short, except for panels not loading in live mode and network issues, my problems were related to Compiz.

Well, Marco software composting didn’t work well with Youtube in Chrome.

So, basically Compton solved my problems or at least those problems that made UM 16.04 pretty much unusable.

I didn’t have Compiz problems in UM 1404 so therefore I switched to Compiz soon after installing UM 16.04 and it didn’t occur to me that it could be the cause of my problems.

I am kind of relieved now. Weird that I would run into pretty much the same Compiz problems in PCLOS LXDE. MATE version of PCLOS had the jumping panel, but not the freezing with Compiz. That was one reason Compiz wasn’t the prime suspect at first.

1 Like

Funny; I don't have the weird jumpiness problems you have and I've used Compiz since Ubuntu became a thing.

Instead of blaming Compiz entirely, I would suggest trying different Compiz configurations via CCSM. There might be something in the Workarounds plugin that does something to resolve your issue, or it might be something else enabled which you can turn off in CCSM to fix your problem.

Another culprit might be Marco + Compiz; if you can, install Emerald, under the Window Decoration plugin specify to use emerald and do gsettings set org.mate.session.required-components windowmanager "" to completely disable Marco, then in mate-session-properties add compiz to startup. (This is almost how Fedora MATE Compiz does it by default.)

Afterward, you can then reset the window manager with either the gsettings command to specify marco instead of nothing, or you can change the compositor startup to use marco instead of compiz if you use nano to modify the respective file in ~/.config/autostart.

or... it might just be your hardware configuration doesn't like Compiz 0.9. If you could, follow my backporting guide in a live session of Ubuntu MATE to see if your problem still exists in 0.8.

That's the best advice I can give you if you want some feature that Compiz provides over Compton. Compiz is a complex beast that can be at times a little temperamental, but under the correct circumstances, can be a boon to your productivity and aesthetics.

In my weird MATE + (xfdesktop + thunar) + Compiz setup, this is usually my stats;


(proc, load; mem, swap; network, disk)

1 Like