Ubuntu MATE Desktop Upgrade Schedule and Development Process

Hello,

I have a question about the development process of Ubuntu MATE, particularly, 18.04 LTS.

I see that MATE Desktop itself is under fairly active development, which is great. I also see that Ubuntu MATE 18.04 hasn’t received many updates to the actual MATE Desktop or its components since it was released.

My question is: Can I expect Ubuntu MATE 18.04 LTS to stay up to date with mainline MATE Desktop development as new versions are released? Or will it only receive critical bug fix updates to MATE 1.20?

In other words, will Ubuntu MATE 18.04 LTS ever receive an update to, say, MATE Desktop 1.22, or would I need to update to something like Ubuntu MATE 18.10 for that?

I ask mainly because LTS Ubuntu versions are generally conservative when it comes to pulling in non-critical bug fix updates to packages.

Thanks,
Jake Moroni

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Yes to the first bit quoted, no to the second, faict.

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Usually it will keep the same version, but I believe there was an updated MATE Desktop available via PPA in the past. For 16.04 is was hard because it used GTK+ 2 and later versions used GTK+ 3, which was a huge change. I believe Martin has said he wanted to get some of the updates from 18.10 included into 18.04 if possible as SRU, so maybe there will be an update this time.

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