Ubuntu MATE 25.04 - Feature Story (By Jeff Siegel)
Linux has been criticized - and then criticized some more - because there are too many of them, whether distros or desktops. Linux's great failing, the critics complain, is that all those choices are too confusing, too baffling for the vast majority of users. All that choice also wastes resources, they claim, that could be better used to perfect the "best" distros to better appeal to that vast majority of users.
To which I say "nuts", and point to Ubuntu MATE and its current release, 25.04, codenamed Plucky Puffin, as an example. It's a professional, competent, and well-designed distro, and it serves its users with speed and efficiency, despite a couple of irritating aggravations. Most importantly, the fact that - after spending a week with it - I don't want to use MATE 25.04 as my daily driver is completely irrelevant. If nothing else, I've never used Evolution, so why would I want to start now?
In a larger sense, MATE isn't designed for users like me. Rather, it exists for those who want the familiarly and straight-forward approach of the GNOME 2 desktop (which GNOME abandoned 14 years ago in its pursuit of the more tablet-like GNOME 3 interface) and that will work with modern hardware and software. There's nothing wrong with that. In this, 25.04 does exactly what its users want it to do, and its creators should be complimented for achieving that goal. .....