https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20180730#budgiemate
I`m not sure if the OP tried the .01 release tho.
Works well on my computer and it’s efficient and snappy. Great version and best distro!
Seems like a thorough and fair review.
It sounds like the reviewer’s system may have been swapping pretty hard, and that would make sense at 2GB. It would probably be true of the majority of distros today. Thunderbird leaks like a sieve (and probably always will), most of the apps we use are consuming a good deal more RAM than they used to because features.
But for the record, I have Ubuntu MATE 18.04 installed on a machine comparable to the one used in the review (Dell Inspiron 4030 with 4G of RAM and a P6200 dual core @ 2.13Ghz), and it was dog-slow until I replaced the aging HDD with an ATA SSD. It’s kind of shocking how well it performs with an SSD in it. The extra 2GB of RAM (vs the reviewer’s system) I’m sure helps a lot too.
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That`s sad about Thunderbird, but I don’t notice that on my Fedora or Mageia (#sorrynotsorry) setups
@mcdonc - that’s the single most important performance change for me. Using an SSD is a must if you intend on using a computer as anything more than just email/browsing. And yeah, Thunderbird is pretty slow unfortunately. I love Geary, but the CSD headers turn me off. I’ve defaulted to sticking to Evolution for now.
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WEPA? I don`t understand?
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
4028 chrism 20 0 3303708 1.313g 131660 S 0.3 2.1 12:05.15 thunderbird
Now it’s true that I have an obscene amount of mail. But if I don’t restart the thing every so often, it just grows til all my 64G of RAM is consumed. It’s just your garden variety memory leak.
The laptop that he had used for his experiment is 10 years old, has got 2 CPU, 2 GB of RAM and a low spec Intel onboard graphic card. The issues that he experienced with Ubuntu Mate (artefacts and booting) are probably caused by an almost dying laptop that can’t cope with the rendering tasks.
I never had any of the issues neither in VMware, nor on two Asus laptops or in Virtualbox, but I have 8 CPU, 8 GB of RAM and a NVidia Geforce card.
A: MATE is a desktop intended for, among other things low spec devices. (I've heard Michael Tunnell say as much, he's part of the team, I'm going off of his comments and the basic requirements, see below; He once recommended MATE over XFCE for low performance machines)
B: The reviewer had a better experience with Budgie and the MATE live session
C. Not all of us can afford 8 gigs and Nvidia 
D: We don't know his machine's almost dying, I can still find the make and model in the market in my place, tbh.
My old home laptp has only 4 gig. But I used a 4 years old work laptop as new main system. Despite that, if you have a Duo Core and 2 gig, you should know that you cannot use a 64bit installer. Sorry, but that guy on Distrowatch has no idea about systems.
Lol, wut? If his machine is 64 bit, why would he use anything but? See the hardware recommendation, that’s for 64 bit.
Seems ironic that you’re accusing him of not having an idea about “systems”, when the best you’ve got is a hack.
If you click on Ubuntu Mate Download, the first information you can see is the information below.
This is for good reason. 32bit operating systems are limited by nature to 3 GB of RAM. If you have a 2 GB RAM system, using a 64bit makes no sense at all.
His processor was made in Q3/2008, and this architecture was outdated already in 2008, when Intel produced that processor.
Looking into computer history, Duo Core had a very short life. Up to 2008, we had single core processors. When first Duo Core systems came on the market in 2008 everybody was expecting a double in speed.
The problem was that Microsoft had released Windows Vista in the meantime, which needed at least 4 GB of RAM to work properly.
Back then machines, however, were only delivered with Duo Core and 2 GB of RAM. This was the reason why Vista was such a failure for Microsoft: hardware couldn't deliver and people complained about not only missing drivers, but system and program crashes.
Intel and Microsoft worked together to provide the right technology for Windows 7.
The i processors were born in late 2008.
In summer 2009, 3 months before Windows 7 was released, Intel announced that XP can't be installed on i processors. People went crazy not understanding why they made a processor that didn't work backwards in time, but only for the feature. No-one could imagine to use another system than XP. A few companies paid a lot to get XP drivers for an i processor, but private users who installed XP on such machine, had only problems: If you use the wrong system on the wrong hardware, you are in trouble. I remember that AMD had an old Athlon system from that time in 2006 and SSE3 was missing. This caused crashes with some programs made in 2012.
Summary:
If you have this one and 2 GB of RAM, then use a 32bit operating system. 32-bit systems are not made for new 64-bit hardware but for exactly that old hardware.
If it’s 64 bit capable, there isn’t much sense using 32 bit releases, which are all but discontinued on most all distros.
They are discontinued for good reason as there are hardly machines that could use such system. But judging a distro on basis of an out of support system and ignoring newer hardware shows how poor his understandig of hardware abd its impact is.
Not all of us can afford new up to date computers all the time, a lot of us have financial commitments…
Also, and the requirements reflect this, his machine meets the recommended stipulation…
[quote=“Newhere, post:14, topic:17430, full:true”]
judging a distro on basis of an out of support system and ignoring newer hardware [/quote]
I’m sure there are normal users, who aren’ t reviewers who also use old hardware, based off of the minimal requirements. Plus, MATE is intended to be a lightweight DE…
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