Ubuntu MATE Community is moving to Ubuntu Discourse

Announcements
1

Hello everyone,

We bring you news that :ubuntu_mate: ubuntu-mate.community (this site) will be archived and joining the rest of the :ubuntu: Ubuntu family over on Ubuntu Discourse.

Ubuntu MATE Community has always been independently hosted, sponsored by Bytemark. With our project leader stepping down, now is a good time to join the other flavours on Ubuntu Discourse.

While this may seem like a surprise, joining Ubuntu Discourse as an official flavour has been considered on both ends for a long time, it was just not known when. You may remember Lubuntu also closed their Discourse in 2022.

This community welcomed all who are fans of the traditional desktop, and we accepted discourse from other distros featuring MATE. We allowed discussions for releases that were beyond their life, or even ran on obscure hardware (PowerPC, anyone?). There will be change in governance as the flavour migrates to Ubuntu Discourse.

What changes?

Ubuntu Discourse has its own set of rules. The categories will be different:

Our category New category
Support & Help Requests Support and Help
Thoughts & Feedback and Development Discussion Flavors & Remixes / Ubuntu MATE
Tips, Tricks and Tutorials Tips & Tricks
Meta Site Feedback

Some categories we had don't exist over there, but there's new ones providing more transparency over releases, events and the Ubuntu council.

As a small community joining a larger one, you'll be introduced to new people behind the magic that brings you Ubuntu MATE, plus they'll be more eyes and hands for support and discussions.

What happens to this site?

We will be preparing a static archive on this domain.

  • Most public topics will be preserved.
    • Some categories (such as Meta) may be omitted.
  • To respect privacy laws, profile pages will default to minimal (username only, stats & badges), unless you opt in.
    • On your next login, you'll be prompted for your choice.
      • You can opt in to preserve your full profile (with avatar and bio)
      • If you'd prefer to be anonymised, you can exercise this right by choosing this option.
  • The archive, like your posts, will be licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (see TOS)

The Plan

  • :key: :no_entry: User accounts (including badges, stats and trust level) are not transferred to Ubuntu Discourse. You'll need to create an account there if you don't have one already.

  • :date: :no_entry: By the end of April 2026, you will no longer be able to log in to this site as we shut down the server.

  • :delivery_truck: :no_entry: Existing topics from this site will not be transferred to Ubuntu Discourse. We encourage you to start posting your new topics over there soon. To allow time to gracefully finish existing discussions, we have a timeline:

  • :globe_showing_europe_africa: :magnifying_glass_tilted_left: This Discourse will be converted into a static website for prosperity.

Timeline

Date Event
30th March New registrations are disabled.
12th April New topics cannot be created.
26th April Site becomes read only. Archival will begin.
30th April Server shut down.

What should I do?

  • Choose whether to opt in or opt out of profile preservation. You'll be prompted at your next login, and you can change your mind via your Preferences later.
  • Save any personal messages you wish to keep.
  • You can download and export your data from Preferences.

What about releases.ubuntu-mate.org?

This was an archive of our old releases, as well as spinning out custom ISOs for specialised hardware, including the Raspberry Pi and GPD Pocket.

As part of the server closure, this archive will also be closed. Don't worry! It'll be available as a large torrent, peer-to-peer style - tell your data hoarding friends if they want to keep a piece of the :ubuntu_mate: and :raspberry_pi: museum.

:dvd: Ubuntu MATE ISO Archive (2014 - 2025).torrent (181.3 GiB)
:laptop: Ubuntu MATE UPC Collection (2021).torrent (99.9 GiB)
:raspberry_pi: Ubuntu Pi Flavour Maker Collection (2018).torrent (8.6 GiB)

To preserve integrity, a copy of the checksums have been published in this topic.

Finally...

A big thank you for being part of this community site, or have once in the past. We had a nice 10 year long run. If you didn't know, our project leader is looking for a new maintainer to continue the retrospective future.

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Checksums for Ubuntu MATE ISO Archive
Until next time! 👋
6

I haven't posted here in quite a while but sad to see it go. I remember the early days testing 14.10 and later 14.04 before they were officially released and being surprised to see what is now my dead name mentioned in it. You will be missed @Wimpy but glad to have been here in the beginning and continue to use the distro throughout the years. Wish you luck in the future.

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I’m sad to see this happen but I can’t say I’m too surprised. The speculation has been endless these past months. Nice to get a confirmation of sorts.

Thanks @Wimpy for the operating system all these years. You extended my time with the interface I love and will likely continue to miss once I move on to OSX.

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8

The Ubuntu MATE Community has always been friendly and understanding, especially to those who are not as technically inclined. Not many forums have that reputation. This site will be missed.

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9

Definitely going to miss this site too.

The Ubuntu Discourse is little more rigid in it's rules and it does take a little getting used to but I've been over there since the old UF was shut down.

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10

@lah7, Ideally, I would vehemently support this. However, I've two concerns:

  1. If I opt to have my profile preserved, as I have, how shall the transferral process cope with my existent account at Ubuntu's Discourse instance, with the same username?

  2. Does this require me to bind my account to Ubuntu SSO? I ask because not solely would that require two Ubuntu accounts, unless one can bind to multiple Discourse accounts, it might also be affected by github.com/canonical/ubuntu.com/issues/14859#issuecomment-3784475313, especially if the aforementioned is true.

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11

@RokeJulianLockhart The archival is specific to ubuntu-mate.community only. The public data on this site will become a static site, with full profiles being opt-in.

  1. No data is transferred to Ubuntu Discourse. (See "The Plan" above)
  2. You'll need to contact Ubuntu Discourse for account issues. The closure of this site does not impact accounts on their site. Users who don't have an account on Ubuntu Discourse will need to sign up.
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12

Ubuntu Discourse has been operating since 2017, and is a different system. I'm found over there (a Community Moderator in fact), and my account here has NO IMPACT on my profile/account over there (just as my Lubuntu Discourse account when it existed; moderator there too had no impact, even when it closed down awhile back).

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13

@lah7, perhaps, I've misunderstood. Is the announcement that the site shall be archived, and the decision that I've made is whether my account shall be deleted or preserved in that archive, rather than transferred?

@guiverc, yes; each Discourse instance utilises separate account storage, unless explicitly integrated with an SSO system, for which the official one is opt-in:

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14

I think you'll find that relates to a Discourse hosted instance; Ubuntu Discourse is hosted by Canonical and not Discourse and thus that doesn't apply, at least how I understand it.

My account here, on Lubuntu discourse (whilst it operated) & Ubuntu discourse have never intefered or interacted with each other, whilst I may have used the same SSO to login on more than one, I never saw any interaction between instances (where all 3 were hosted on different sites anyway!)

Nothing is being transferred to Ubuntu Discourse as I understand it either; Lubuntu did consider moving some of their docs from their instance to Ubuntu Discourse, but that never happened. If a move of data takes place it's a load of work.

I may not know this Ubuntu MATE Discourse like @lah7, but I'm a moderator (at Ubuntu Discourse) thus attending Moderator meetings etc over at Ubuntu Discourse.

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15

The end of an era indeed

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16

Correct. Essentially, this site becomes frozen in time in a static format.

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17

It’s… Sad.

I had a fun run with Ubuntu MATE when I still used it. I hope ya folks will continue providing us with a good distro.

Good luck on the new platform!

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18

This place helped me love Linux. Thanks to everyone who gave me their time and attention. I will miss this site but more so the people in it.

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19

Luke, at what point in time will the site be frozen in such a state that no further postings will be allowed to take place?

Is the archiving happening by transferring to new host/URL, or simply putting a freeze on everything where it currently exists?


Sorry, just found my answer by re-reading OP.

Thank you, Luke.

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21

In an attempt to keep the Community together, should all members of the Community now be creating new postings under the Official banner for the UbuntuMATE flavour on the main Ubuntu Discourse, namely

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22

Hopefully most will migrate there. Just can't post support/help questions in the flavour(s) category.

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23

This category is for discussions around Ubuntu MATE.
Please note this category is not for technical support.

What exactly is discussion that isn't technical support? I though forums where for technical support. Silly me.

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24

Ubuntu Discourse is a larger multi-level Discourse system than over here on Ubuntu MATE Discourse/Community. It has 27,702 users currently (you can contrast with here if you like).

Ubuntu Discourse started as the Ubuntu Community Hub (2017), with Support off-topic on the site, as users who wanted support could use Ubuntu Forums. Slowly more and more projects, some operated by Canonical, joined the Ubuntu Community Hub, and the site changed name to just Ubuntu Discourse.

When Canonical decided to close down Ubuntu Forums, a Ubuntu Forums Transition Team was created that worked out what was required so Ubuntu Forums could move to Ubuntu Discourse as well, this led to the creation of the Support and Help area and support was thus allowed in that section of Discourse only.

( You will find some of the Canonical areas in Project Discussion etc, do allow support questions, but only support specific to that project/product or what they area actually covers; that doesn't currently include any flavor/remix area )

If you explore other flavor sections that have used Ubuntu Discourse for longer, you'll find release annoucements, questions, posts asking for development suggestions (dropping some package/app & replacing it with another), voting for wallpapers etc. eg. Xubuntu are in voting now for their 26.04 wallpaper and more.

Each of the flavor teams can decide themselves how they decide to use it, and in some flavor team members have been given moderator rights for their own flavor area (eg. I'm on the Ubuntu News team, thus became a moderator in that area years before I was made a Community Moderator for Ubuntu Discourse). You'll recognize shield logos on users with moderator rights (in an area); mine used to show only in the Ubuntu News area before I was granted the Community Moderator rights I now have, and there are still areas on Ubuntu Discourse where my username/posts show no shield too!

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