A few days ago I installed (still pre pre pre alpha) Ubuntu-Mate 24.04 Noble Numbat on my ageing Thinkpad T420.
It was quite stunning to see it install without a hitch an running rock solid as if it was a late beta. Ofcourse the Boutique is not yet populated and the like, but browsing/surfing, libre office, multimedia, networking etc. just work fine.
Sure there are some old small unimportant papercuts remaining from older versions at the moment, like the old wnck crash when previews in the windowselector are enabled (which I don't use) and the ayatana-clock-indicator day and month switched in my locale (nl) when weekday is also enabled (so I use the old date/time applet), but those hardly count as showstoppers.
There is a new small, and only cosmetic, papercut where the fields in the workspace switcher have the wrong aspectratio (it ignores the width value) which is also not a big deal because it just works anyway.
But I also found some things that have been fixed and/or improved:
- panel icon no longer stuck on plank after panel actions
- startup applications has gained a maximize button (which is absolutely a welcome improvement)
- libmateweather is up to date (=works without needing patching)
- faster boot, at least on this laptop
Ofcourse I pimped it a bit, tailored to the black/red T420
(using the jammy version of the "ambient-mate-lah7" ppa)
Thus far I'm pleasantly surprised (i.e. highly impressed) and eagerly following the developement of this already rock solid pre-pre-pre alpha version.
DISCLAIMER (BEWARE!):
DO NOT INSTALL THIS VERSION YET on a computer that you need for your daily work or the like. It is still in developement.
I can testdrive this because my Thinkpad has no further purpose at the moment so any crash or diskfailure is not a problem.