Some 18.04 Beta 1 feedback

Maybe “You can choose a layout below:” would work? That makes it a choice on the user’s part.

It might also be a good idea to have a delay and then a revert or a choose another option button for people so complete newcomers understand that more than one option is available and that it’s completely permissible to play with them all to find the right one for their own personal use?

Thanks for the feedback about the title, I’ll ensure the title gets a better name. :slight_smile: I’m thinking of ditching the question for a statement – as it is the Welcome program – “A desktop for everyone’s tastes”.

The text underneath will be amended to:

Ubuntu MATE holds a wide range of customisation options, including the ability to offer a layout that is familiar towards your workflow. You can choose one as a starting point and make further changes to it later.

This should hopefully provide the hint to new MATE users that these are not “fixed” options and that it’s possible to configure panels and applets later.


Definitely a typo :slight_smile:


On my (relatively clean) VM of the 18.04 daily build, panels have been switching without a problem. There were only minor quirks like all windows minimising (usually when switching between dock-based panels).

This feature literally executes MATE Tweak, so you could see if switching panels works OK there normally.

Clicking a panel will apply it straight away, so I’m not sure on a delay timer/revert option in addition.

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More issues I've just found:

  • Welcome Screen Customize Panels: Redmond layout puts the panel on top instead of bottom
  • Drag and drop icons from the Familiar menu to the desktop or right-click the icon and 'pin to desktop' are not working, I rebooted and my desktop was like a work of art, look at the icons, specially Firefox, is huge for no reason... so they were being moved to the desktop but were not showing up, they were hidden(but the default system icons on the left were showing up normally, minus the Terminal that I think I've pinned):

Wouldn’t it be better to match the menu names and desktop layouts to avoid confusion?
I find them very confusing, suggestion:

  • Brisk Menu --> Contemporary/Familiar/Pantheon Menu
  • Brisk Menu Launcher --> Cupertino/Mutiny menu
  • Main Menu --> Netbook menu
  • MATE Menu --> Redmond menu
  • Menu Bar --> Traditional menu

This is useful when you are adding a menu on a panel(right-click, Add to Panel…).

OK, I really like that because it emphasizes choice. That’s definitely what we want to encourage for those who want to explore and want to customize their environment. This is some great wording there.

Right, I understand that it applies immediately–I was making a suggestion that some sort of dialog be added as a ‘don’t panic’ message similar to how changing display resolution works. This way if people make a change and hate it there’s a button they can hit to immediately revert to whatever the previous layout was. I think it’d take some of the feeling of risk out.

Preferred Applications(Control Center) icons are messed up.

Tabs: Internet, Multimedia and Office, rest is fine.

Control Panel icons have different sizes, Bluetooth Manager icon is too small:

Providing the capacity, on first boot, to choose panel layouts in the welcome screen is very impressive and entirely on-point with regards to providing choice.

I am properly impressed.

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About the Help, the 'blue box+light green font' are a bad choice of colors, there should be more contrast so it's easier to read, please change that:

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  • Mutiny menu(Brisk Menu Launcher) button has a different icon size compared to the rest of the left dock icons
  • Backspace/clear button(after search) could have a different color(white, gray)

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These black lines of Brisker Menu make the menu look ugly, in my opinion they should be removed, they serve no purpose.

I've painted them with red, the left black box and the top right black line:

If they were the same color of the background the Brisker Menu would be way more beautiful.

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So… That’s it, enough feedback.

This was way longer than I’ve expected at the beginning, sorry for the tons of screenshots, opinions and suggestions.

It’s not the finished distro(beta) yet and things will certainly improve until the LTS gets launched. I hope some of the points mentioned above help improve the distro for everyone.

Fresh install of Ubuntu MATE 18.04 (alpha) on ASUS P8H67-M PRO, Samsung 850 EVO 150 GB SSD, 16 GB RAM, 17 GB swap area + all updates available via Software Updater

Control Center - MATE Tweak

  • missing Interface - Icons -> Show icons on buttons (used to disable this - icons on buttons is so 1990-ies)

Hibernate / Resume from Hibernate

Software Boutique

  • Etcher - Update -> installation works now
  • Virtualbox - Update -> installation works now

Redmond Layout

  • Brisk menu can be added to the panel, but cannot be moved at all - it is not placed correctly
  • saving a customised Redmond layout is possible - restoring the saved layout is a mess - only some of the icons saved to the “quick launch” panel do appear, others don’t (same issue on Ubuntu MATE 17.10 for some months now)

(to be updated…)

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I use to use that option too. You can still change it using gsettings:

gsettings set org.mate.interface buttons-have-icons false

Thank you, it works :slight_smile: I’ve added this to my “Linux Commands / Setup” file :smile:

A GUI option would still be desirable.

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  1. The Traditional panel layout will not accept inputs from a touch screen for anything in the sub-menus of the top panel. No other panel layout seems to be affected. Touch screen is working correctly in all other area’s.

  2. When Cupertino is selected in mate-tweak and saved as a custom layout, then selected again after switching from another layout, Cupertino with brisk menu in the top panel is restored. Old layout perhaps? Edit: The brisk menu is only present after selecting the saved custom layout that was based on Cupertino.

18.04b1 patched to tonight has a rather odd German interpolation in the (UK English) Software & Updates:

I presume this is a Canonical error. Common sense would suggest that it should be removed quickly, but never assume common sense :smiling_imp:

Can’t get gnome-boxes or vm to work…something missing?

Hi @perstreperous,

what are your regional settings like?:

:smiley:

Yes, one language/keyboard (United Kingdom).

Replying to myself, but now we know what this is; it had evidently been sneaked into a nightly without documentation. It is a mechanism for patching the kernel and making the patch “live” without rebooting, which requires a Ubuntu One account :confounded:

(And the German text is fixed … “Sign in …”).