Oh boy.
This is getting tiresome. Take a look at the poll steven linked. This question was asked and out of the seventy-one people who bothered to vote only 22.01 agreed with changing the default. That's what this has been about--defaults. Oh and lying or misdirection or even 'Hey we changed our minds and it's our ball--deal with it!' which ever one you prefer to call it when they snuck it in a daily and prevaricated when called on it by those of us who thought this was settled already.
And you know what? It's true. This is Wimpy's distro. He can do whatever he likes with it. He wants to veer even closer towards being a LinuxMint clone, that's his choice. It's not like the theme didn't clue us in long ago that this was the Ubuntu for people who wanted to use Mate but not LinuxMint's Mate.
I refuse however to be slandered. Or let people treat me like Jordan Peterson. ''So you're saying..." No, let me tell you what I'm saying.
Ubuntu-Mate was advertised as the Ubuntu Distro with the Mate desktop. The same desktop some of us have been enjoying for the last ten or more years that it's been available. It's the reason most of us are here. We liked the way Ubuntu's version of the Gnome 2.x desktop looked and behaved, it was familiar to us. This distro offered us that experience again out of the box. So we came back from where ever we had scattered to while Canonical frittered away money playing with Unity. Canonical could have started the Mate Desktop themselves--I wonder how much more would be using Ubuntu and Linux today if they had?
So after winning us over with one of the best desktop experiences in the world, what has Wimpy decided to do? He'd decided to shove us off into the corner for a mere 31% of his userbase in defiance of the clear majority of people who saw the poll and cared enough to vote in it. Let me remind you for the reason behind the change:
To me that says there is a bug that needs to be fixed to make the various layouts work better with each other and the upgrade process. Because unless that happens I guarantee that it will always be a non-trivial matter to migrate those settings. The result? Well look at the git:
We're going back to the dark ages it says. And the default layout that is the dark ages according to this? Ubuntu-Mate.
So yes, this is a big deal. Defaults always are. If it was not such a big deal, why not simply set it so every time the user logs in they get a different layout? It's all the same right?
I'm thrilled at the many different layouts. I think it's great to have so many options available. I just think they should remain options.
Eh? What about your options? You have literally every other distro under the sun, leave this one for the people who wanted it. Leave us this one. Why can't you make those simple adjustments? We were here first!
Otherwise don't be surprised if the "Tradition" of Ubuntu-Mate ends here. Out of sight means out of mind. Ask yourself why there is a focus on replacing the default layout rather than fixing it so that new layout settings can be added and migrated?
In any case I'm tired. I'm tired of being accused. I've not lied. I've sourced my statements previously in the thread. I'm tired of being accused of bad faith by people who just want new shineys. I repeat, if it's really so trivial and the community has made its thoughts known why can't you make the adjustment.