The future of Ubuntu Mate

Given Canonical’s recent push away from Unity, it would be interesting to hear what the official plans are for Ubuntu Mate going forward. Mark Shuttleworth’s been quoted as saying the desktop is still important to Canonical, but what that means for other official flavours I don’t know :slight_smile:

When you’re able to say more than “no comment”, Wimpy, would be great to hear your thoughts and plans :smiley:

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I like what you are thinking @BrokenCanoe. MATE would be the most logical desktop for Ubuntu.

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Actually, Canonical has already announced that they are shifting back to Gnome in Ubuntu 18.04 lts. Probably the Mate flavor will be an even more relevant alternative for people who just can’t stand Gnome!

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I believe Ubuntu MATE will modernise itself to appeal to more users out there. Traditional desktop, yes, but enriched with more of these new trendy things like Plank dock and the like.

Hallo

The future of Ubuntu-Mate? Well it looks bright to me.

Yesterday I did something “else”. Using KVM I installed openSUSE Leap 42.3 twice, once with the Gnome desktop and once with the KDE (Plasma) desktop.

KDE proved to be a problem - I found it difficult to find “stuff” and in the VM could not find how to adjust the monitor resolution. I would not install that for a “just starting with Linux” user.

Gnome was easier to use, although “everything is hidden” was my first impression. If I’d just bought a pre-installed laptop with Ubuntu-Gnome I’d be looking for guidance as to how to find what I needed (controls?), and how to make it “easier” to work with. I was, however, able to adjust the monitor resolution without too much hunting around.

Canonical, having decided that their in-house desktop “Unity” should no longer be developed had to find a replacement. The Gnome desktop reminded me of Unity (which I used for about 18 months before Ubuntu-Mate came along). I personally would not consider KDE-Plasma, as experienced in a VM on top of openSUSE, to be an option. Gnome looks and behaves more like Unity than the Mate desktop does, so from a “continuity-of-user-experience” point of view I can see that this would make sense.

But, for my money, I’d choose Ubuntu-Mate (including of course the Software boutique), particularly for non-technical Linux newcomers. You open the box, plug it in, press start and can see how to use it. :grinning: That’s what people want, all those people for whom a computer is simply a means to an end - and that is the great majority of users.
All those who have contributed to the development of Ubuntu-Mate have brought the distribution to the point where it is (in my opinion) the best choice for a “use it to get things done” Linux. :clap:

So, the future of Ubuntu-Mate? For me it looks very bright.

(Why did I do the crazy stuff with openSUSE? Well did you know that openSUSE shipped Wayland before Fedora? As far as I know they did. And besides, many summers ago there was a boxed Linux OS and a Pentium 3 desktop… :book:)

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I’ve tried every other desktop environment out there, and I keep coming back to Mate on Ubuntu. It’s an odd thing to explain, but for me it fits, very very well. It’s well thought-out and beautifully designed with functionality in mind. Here’s hoping to a long and steady future.

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I personally have tried KDE twice, tried OpenSuse once once, I will stick with my MATE desktop!

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As much as I adore the customization capacity of KDE, esp. the power management, I’ve had too many issues with Nvidia propriety drivers. MATE just works flawlessly on any hardware, it’s fast, stable and looks really decent. Plus I use the traditional single bottom panel layout. Gnome is a bit cumbersome. Cinnamon is OK. MATE accomplishes the same but is lighter.

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Well to add my own thoughts on this. I trust Mate more than any other Distro for sheer functionality for relative newbies such as myself. It works wonderfully for a small installation (which it needs to be to work on raspberry pi). Saying that I do have the luxury (or liability) of an old PC laptop to work on. I actually prefer Mate over my other three machines, which include an old Mac, Fedora 21 and Elememtary OS for good measure!

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I also have tried just about every DE available at one time or other. And keep coming back to Mate myself. It’s simple yet full featured and I can make it do what I need. never like Gnome shell , though it’s getting better. KDE is fine but most of the bling is not needed and didn’t care for it. Used XFCE for a number of years and it’s a good DE also, but Just like the feel of Mate, Maybe because I used to like Gnome 2. In any event I Hope Mate has a bright future :slight_smile:

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