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. 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.
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… )