Ubuntu Mate compared to Ubuntu with Mate desktop

I’ve been happy with UM 16.04 experiences! It’s installed on 2 machines each with a test partition.
My main OS on both of these machines is Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. During my explore with Mate I discovered that the Mate desktop is available in Ubuntu 14 and Ubuntu 16.
I’m hoping that someone here can describe the main differences Ubuntu Mate compared to Ubuntu with Mate desktop.

Thanks in advance
Pete

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I tried it before I switched entirely to Ubuntu MATE, and I found the following:

  • The login screen would look like Ubuntu MATE, and then there would be a delay loading the interface if you went into Unity. Not a big deal, just aesthetic.
  • The notification bubbles would be like Ubuntu MATE. This was actually a big plus, because it meant they could be closed!
  • I did have one or two strange things, like two network icons appearing on the top panel.

Otherwise there probably isn’t that much difference, other than the fact that if you are going to use MATE the whole time, there is not much point having all the unity stuff loaded. Personally I have switched to MATE on my desktop, but kept unity on my laptop because unity copes better with High resolution display.

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Thanks for the quick reply @Captainwozzeck
I’m investigating and when I decide it will be the same for both desktop and laptop. I’ve not yet installed the mate desktop on Ubuntu. There’s conflicting information (possibly just outdated). How difficult is the desktop install, and how does one switch from Unity to Mate?

I am currently using Edubuntu 14.04 with Ubuntu Mate desktop installed over the top and with Unity desktop subsequently removed. Required a few post installation tweaks. But, following them, it works really well.

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The desktop install is very easy, you just run the command:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-mate-core ubuntu-mate-desktop

Then at the login screen you will see a button near the box where you enter your password. This button will either have the MATE symbol or the ubuntu symbol. If you click on that you will see a list of the desktop environments currently installed that you can choose from to log in to.

MATE should work really nicely on laptop too, just my laptop has a very high resolution screen and unity does a really good job of scaling the display. If you have a normal laptop display then you should have no problems with MATE :slight_smile:

To just install the MATE environment (without Ubuntu MATE applications), then mate-desktop is only needed.

sudo apt-get install mate-desktop

Having ubuntu-mate-desktop and ubuntu-desktop (Unity) installed is like merging the two distros together, so there could be conflicts or glitches later.

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I am at the point that I like one Desktop, one browser, one email client.
A while back I would have at least two browsers.
Right now I have Mate, Firefox and Thunderbird.
I went Mate because it reminded me of Red Hat 8.
Hope this helps.

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@lah7 Thanks Luke - this is the option I will try.

@cinema2k Thanks Ricky - I have both my machines primary OSes configured with Ubuntu, FireFox, Thunderbird, gnome flashback, & LibreOffice. The only reason I’m experimenting is Ubuntu 16 didn’t play nice with nautilus and Firefox - I was advised on Ubuntu forums to try UM - so here I am!

@lah7 I was unable to switch the login to Mate until I installed core. There are already issues with mate tweak - but this is a throw away test environment for me to determine whether to use UM or U with mate desktop.

It is nice to have more than one way to do something on a computer.
An example would be using the command line when the graphical equivalent will not work.
Having too many programs such as web browser and email client, etc seems to load the hdd with too much stuff.

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I have replaced UM 16 with Ubuntu 16 with Mate desktop on my tower PC for testing. My initial findings / thoughts:

  • Mate tweak fails repeatedly
  • Many utilities are duplicated resulting in a bit of bloat. as predicted by @lah7
  • Added complication is probably not needed
  • Gnome software center is installed
    I’ll stick with UM on my laptop and U with Mate desktop on tower until 16 is officially released. My gut tells me that UM 16 will probably be my choice for my primary distribution replacing U 14
    I’m hoping that UM 16 will have 5 year support.
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It definitely will, like Ubuntu and other flavours. (It's the first official LTS release of Ubuntu MATE too.) :slight_smile:

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