Ubuntu MATE 14.04 LTS Useful Information

You may find the following information useful, which is why we titled the section Useful Information since the information presented here is mostly useful.

cpufreqd

cpufredq is installed by default but for most users it should probably be removed as it can interfere with other power saving and CPU frequency management tools. To remove cpufreqd open a shell with CTRL + ALT + t and do the following:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get purge cpufreqd

Virtualbox and proprietary drivers

If you have installed Ubuntu MATE in a Virtualbox guest or have hardware that requires proprietary drivers then you can easily install the Virtualbox guest modules and proprietary hardware drivers by navigating to System -> Preferences -> Additional Drivers via the main menu.

Windows classic style panel layout.

Ubuntu MATE includes a panel layout similar in appearance to Windows XP classic mode.

WARNING! Changing panel layouts will destroy any customisations you have made to your panels.

To enable this alternative panel layout open a shell and run the following:

mate-panel --reset --layout redmond-indicators

If you want to revert to the default Ubuntu MATE panel layout then run the following:

mate-panel --reset --layout ubuntu-mate-indicators

MATE Menu panel layouts

There are also variants of the default themes that include the MATE Menu, called ubuntu-mate-indicators-fresh and
redmond-indicators-fresh.

You can switch to them using:

mate-panel --reset --layout ubuntu-mate-indicators-fresh

Or:

mate-panel --reset --layout redmond-indicators-fresh

EFI and UEFI systems

The Ubuntu MATE amd64 .iso image can boot EFI capable computers from USB and DVD, with or without SecureBoot enabled. However, if you encounter any difficulties booting EFI hardware then try:

  • Disabling SecureBoot.
  • Enabling Legacy BIOS or BIOS emulation mode.
  • Try the amd64+mac .iso image.

Even though Macs use a variant of EFI (an earlier version of what’s now called UEFI), they apparently can’t cope with multi-catalog CDs, and simply refuse to boot them. Therefore the amd64+mac images are available, which are exactly the same as the amd64 images except that they only support BIOS booting. Macs are happy to boot these in their BIOS emulation mode.

The name amd64+mac is a slight misnomer, because it turns out that some systems other than Macs suffer from a similar problem and using the amd64+mac image on some EFI capable PC hardware will work.

Hibernation and home directory encryption

It is not possible to hibernate a computer if home directory encryption was selected during the installation. This is not a bug, it is by design.

Selecting home directory encryption during the installation of Ubuntu MATE also enables encryption of the swap partition. When swap is encrypted hibernation is disabled.

Shotwell online publishing

Most Shotwell online publishing plugins are not installed “out of the box” because they have dependencies on Unity and Qt5 which vastly increases the iso image size. The Shotwell online publishing can be installed as follows:

sudo apt-get install account-plugin-facebook account-plugin-flickr \
account-plugin-google libaccount-plugin-generic-oauth \
libaccount-plugin-google unity-control-center-signon

Or you can install the Shotwell online publishing plugins by clicking the link below.

Installing the packages above also installs a number of Unity packages that add duplicate icons and functionality to the MATE control center.

Complex input methods

If you require complex input methods and the default keyboard layouts provided by MATE are not sufficient for your needs then you may want to install IBus or fcitx.

While MATE does currently support complex input methods, Ubuntu MATE will have either IBus or fcitx integrated in a future release to provide comprehensive input method support.

Installing IBus

You can install IBus by clicking the link below.

To set IBus as the default input method open Language Support from System -> Preferences -> Language Support and select IBus as the system input method.

You can switch keyboard layouts by using the <Control>+Space hot key.

In addition to the above you may need to install extra input methods such as ibus-mozc (Japanese), ibus-pinyin (Chinese) or ibus-hangul (Korean).

Installing fcitx

fcitx is considered to be superior to IBus. You can install fcitx by clicking the link below.

Now open a terminal as run the following:

fcitx -r
fcitx

You should only need to complete the step above once. A white keyboard icon should appear in the system tray. Right click the keyboard icon and choose configure to add additional input type and keyboard layouts.

To set fcitx as the default input method open Language Support from System -> Preferences -> Language Support and select fcitx as the system input method.

You can switch keyboard layouts by using the <Control>+Space hot key.

In addition to the above you may need to install extra input methods such as fcitx-mozc (Japanese), fcitx-libpinyin (Chinese) or fcitx-hangul (Korean).

More MATE for your money

There are some additional MATE specific tools and utilities that are not installed by default in Ubuntu MATE because they are not suitable for everyone.

Caja plug-ins

There are some additional plug-ins for Caja, the Ubuntu MATE file manager, that can be installed via the Ubuntu Software Centre.

  • caja-share - Allows you to quickly share a folder from the Caja file manager without requiring root access. It uses Samba, so your folders can be accessed by any operating system.

  • caja-image-converter - Adds a Resize Images... menu item to the context menu of all images. This opens a dialogue where you set the desired image size and file name. A click on “Resize” finally resizes the image(s) using ImageMagick’s convert tool.

MATE components

Some additional MATE components that you may find useful.

  • mate-netbook - An applet and a daemon to maximize windows and move their titles on the panel. Installing this package is only recommended for netbooks and similar devices with low resolution displays.

  • mate-user-share - Allows easy user-level file sharing via WebDAV. The shared files are announced on the network by Avahi.

Source packages

After default installation of Ubuntu Mate 14.04 LTS there it is not possible to get the source packages for Ubuntu MATE.

The workaround is to add these lines to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/extra-ppas.list

deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mate-dev/ppa/ubuntu trusty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mate-dev/trusty-mate/ubuntu trusty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/accessibility-dev/ppa/ubuntu trusty main

This issue will be properly resolved when Ubuntu MATE is an official Ubuntu flavour. See the following bug report for the full details.

3 Likes

This is some great information, I am going to give the Shotwell plug-ins a go!

I’m going to link to these from the main site when we go public :smiley:

I send a hearty Thanks for your help that command cause I (stupidly) deleted the bottom panel to make the win 7 theme look more authentic suposedly. I have learned my lesson it is well noted to make sure before do something I learn how to undo it before I do.

On my ThinkPad I’m running the linrunner/tlp ppa. Is it recommended to run this command?

Thanks for reply!

Yes, I run tlp on all my laptops (ThinkPad and Dell) it is an excellent utility to significantly extend battery life :smiley:

Ok, thank you. And when I run tlp, then I should remove cpufreqd from my Ubuntu Mate 14.4.1?

Yes, everyone should remove cpufreqd from their Ubuntu MATE systems anyway. So remove cpufreqd then install tlp.

Thank you for instructions Martin. I removed cpufreqd. tlp and thinkfinger I already installed for a wile ago and I it’s working well.

I’m making promotion for UM by friends and fellow students as I can. Especially Win 8 users are not glad about its OS and are maybe open to change to UM. Perhaps I can try to translate instructions, those are helpful for beginners, in german language?