UM 18.04 mate tweak not working as it should

Support & Help Requests
#1

I have 18.04 installed on 3 laptops (one is a server) and a desktop. Only in the upstairs laptop server does MATE Tweak offer me the opportunity to select another layout.

For instance on this laptop, I have working MATE Tweaks in both 16.04 and 17.10 but not in 18.04. All of these are fresh installs, not upgrades of any sort. I'm not a believer in upgrades from one version to the next.

tweak-16.04.png663×691 57 KB

This is 16.04--------------

This is 17.10--------------

tweak-18.04.png652×595 48.6 KB

and 18.04 displays above.

My directory (and the other non-working installs) has what it needs - see below. I've tried several ideas found on this forum but nothing seems to get me more than a Gnome2 offering. Not actually interested in getting this working so much but I am interested in finding out what is holding this thing back.

tweak-layouts-18.04.png610×598 110 KB

Got any good ideas?

Missing panel layouts in UM 18.04
#2

Weird that that would happen on a clean install :confused:

The different layouts are conditional to the packages that are installed. Try running

sudo apt install mate-dock-applet plank mate-hud mate-applet-brisk-menu mate-menu mate-applet-appmenu

I think I have them all there… But that should at least give you most of the layouts. If you want to be extra sure and don’t mind extra packages, you can also run

sudo apt install mate-*

Which should install pretty much every mate app, applet, and plugin in the repo :slight_smile:

#3

I think I tried something like your first suggestion. I tried again -

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
mate-applet-appmenu is already the newest version (0.6.94+repack1-1).
mate-applet-brisk-menu is already the newest version (0.5.0-7ubuntu1).
mate-dock-applet is already the newest version (0.85-1).
mate-hud is already the newest version (18.04.8-0ubuntu1).
mate-menu is already the newest version (18.04.3-2ubuntu1).
plank is already the newest version (0.11.4-2).
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded.

I’m trying the second suggestion now -

The following NEW packages will be installed:
  apache2-bin caja-image-converter caja-share docbook docbook-to-man docbook-xsl gtk-doc-tools highlight
  highlight-common intltool libapache2-mod-dnssd libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
  libdbus-1-dev libdbus-glib-1-dev libglib2.0-dev libglib2.0-dev-bin libopenobex2 libosp5 libpcre16-3
  libpcre3-dev libpcre32-3 libpcrecpp0v5 mate-backgrounds mate-common mate-core mate-desktop-environment
  mate-desktop-environment-extra mate-desktop-environment-extras mate-icon-theme-faenza mate-polkit-bin
  mate-sensors-applet-nvidia mate-settings-daemon-dev mate-user-share mate-user-share-common obex-data-server
  opensp pkg-config python-funcsigs python-gobject python-mock python-pbr python3-distutils python3-lib2to3
  xsltproc
0 upgraded, 47 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded.
Need to get 44.5 MB of archives.

We’ll see - done. Nothing seemingly is changed. I’ll reboot.

Edit: Nope. Everything is the same. The surprise to me, was that the install that I did the least to, a laptop server, MATE Tweak works as expected. Thanks for your suggestions @vkareh.

#4

About your server @mdooley. Did you install Ubuntu 18.04 server, then install Mate DE on top of that?

#5

No. Even though I call them servers, they are desktops pressed into server duty. Thanks for your interest.

How to remove power option icon only from notification area?
#6

Very confusing… So, the way mate-tweak works is by checking which of the apps are installed, then enables the layouts that use those apps from the one on the directory.

Which means that Traditional should always be there. If you have Brisk Menu, then that would enable the Familiar layout, and so on. The fact that your system only shows GNOME2 is puzzling. I’ll try to take a look at the mate-tweak code tomorrow and see under what circumstances that one would show up.

#7

Thanks vkareh. I hope you find out what could cause this misfire.

#8

I think I have some more information about this problem. I reinstalled 18.04 on an alternate laptop the day before yesterday and noticed something different about my install - I actually used MATE Tweak to change the default layout - the one with the brisk menu - to traditional. Throughout all the subsequent changes and personal tweaks, MATE Tweak kept the ability to change layouts and still has it.

On several ( 3? ) of my previous installs, I updated the install, rebooted, used Software Boutique to install a bunch of software, rebooted and then removed the Brisk menu directly without consulting or using MATE Tweak. I think this has something to do with only having the GNOME2 layout available at this point. User error right? It worked on 16.04…

I’ll be reinstalling several of these 18.04 installations unless I hear differently from you. Thanks for your time vkareh.

#9

@vkareh Another piece of information. A discrete piece. I re-installed UM 18.04 on this old Dell laptop beginning mid afternoon today. (God, how I hate to do this…) I get things more or less set up as I want, reboot several times and check MATE Tweak (it’s good…) and then, this evening, just a few minutes ago, after disabling an indicator service (because I just want to use firetray), Mate Tweak goes to blank. When I clicked on the blank space, nothing other than GNOME2 shows. Choke!

However, this time instead of having removed the message indicator in Synaptic (as I had done previously), I had gone to /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-messages/and renamed indicator-messages-service adding dot disabled. I went back and renamed it without the .disabled extension, logged out and back in and MATE Tweak now has the missing layout options!

Thought you should know.

#10

@mdooley - okay now that makes a lot more sense. I’m looking at the mate-tweak and basically every single layout depends on the indicators being available.

Tweak determines whether it’s available or not by checking all the necessary libraries and services associated with it:

  • indicator-application-service
  • indicator-sound-service
  • indicator-messages-service
  • indicator-power-service
  • indicator-session-service
  • libapplication.so
  • org.ayatana.panel.IndicatorApplet.mate-panel-applet

If any of those files are missing, it determines that indicators are not available, and that effectively gets rid of all the layouts. The code seems to reference *-no-indicator versions of each of the layouts, but those don’t exist in the repo, so I guess it would support them, they are just not shipped…

I’m assuming @Wimpy wants to keep the indicators arounds as the default (there’s actually a lot of good work being put into them). So I would suggest re-enabling the indicators, removing the indicator applet from whichever layouts you’d like to keep around, save those layouts, and then remove the indicators again. I think that could work to give you the list without indicators.

Alternatively, we could submit a pull request to the ubuntu-mate-settings repository with the *-no-indicators versions in there (which seems like it would just be the same layout files but without the indicators section in it).

1 Like
#11

Glad to hear from you vkareh. I am at the remaining 18.04 server and have reinstalled indicator-messages along with a few other updates. Before doing this, MATE Tweak just showed GNOME2 as a layout, after doing the install/update, MATE Tweak now displays the eight layouts that are expected.

No need to submit a pull request on my part, just glad to get to the bottom of this conundrum.

1 Like
#12

mine was also clean install but no option to get places and System on a top menu, your first suggestion worked after rebooting and just choosing Traditional