I'm curious about what brought any of you to this distribution. I started to use linux because of windows 11 but am still keeping a dualboot in case i need anything that requires windows. My old laptop with 2gb of ram is running fine with linux. My reason for converting my old laptop is that windows straight up refused to detect drivers for that particular device. What brought you over?
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Sometimes it takes time in Linux to find the right distribution. I started with Xandros as a dual boot years ago but the LILO boot loader was unreliable and kept losing Windows which I still needed. Linux was not ready for prime time, you had to download and install every program manually from a tarball. After that I tried the old Solus, but Ikey shut it down in a day. Then I used Zorin, but it was geared to new users coming from Windows and changed to be like Windows to much, hidden and locked down. Then I tried Point, which also went away quickly. After that Debian Stable, but I got tired of out of date software warnings. Then Ubuntu withe Gnome 2, but the Unity desktop came out which I hated. So when the community put together a Mate Edition I tried it and it was exactly what I wanted. I have been using it since almost day one. Yet I have moved one laptop to Mint Mate over snaps, waiting to see where Ubuntu and snaps go, I do not want to be forced to snaps and if I am I will move my other laptop to Mint Mate also.
So now I want a major Linux distribution not a small independent one, it must offer the Mate desktop and be based on Debian. Those are my requirements.
I also have one laptop on Parrot Mate for when I need privacy and security.
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When i was thinking of a way to revive my old laptop, it came to mind that i should install linux mint instead of going with windows. I was considering ubuntu (i didn't know about any flavours) but hearing that 25gb of space was needed for a smooth experience drove me away as my old laptop's storage is 32gb. I booted up linux mint from the usb and was shocked at how wifi worked out of the box, while on windows i was searching the web for the driver but didn't find one. I didn't dualboot. I wiped the entire disk clean and in 10 minutes, i was up and ready to go!
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Gnome think multiple upgrades are needed every year. Mate supported the classic look of Gnome, so I went that direction. No regrets.
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Tried the base Ubuntu 12. Installed it fine, did not like the Unity interface and didn't have the skill level to follow instructions on it's removal. Dumped it and back to Windows. Decided to explore again around Ver. 16 and found MATE 16.04 LTS. Turned out to be what I was looking for. Went to 18.04 MATE - 20.04 MATE and am on 22.04 MATE. It's great, bottom panel with 47 icons and 6 workspaces. Sorta glad tried the In-Line upgrade so it kept most of my settings and installed items. Just saved time as have spreadsheet with all installed, configuration settings, etc if I do a full install. So far works as expected with minor once in awhile the desktop blinks out and back and have to start over in that project. Yes I realize it is not yet a point release.
Upgrade was easy to check using the spreadsheet to verify all came over.
Thanks to all the workers who brought forth this excellent piece of software.
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Hi folks, I went to Linux years ago because I wanted a secure alternative to Micro$oft. I also needed an OS I could offer my PC customers for their older PC's.
Like most, I played with many distros until I landed on Mate in 2018...real glad that Unity garbage went away. I also use Mint and Manjaro on some models depending on unit hardware and performance.
Now a days I use Ubuntu Mate (without Snapd) and Mac OS 10 "Monterey" as my main drivers, but still run Windows 10 and 11 to support my customers.
Cheers!
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I chose Ubuntu 20.04 LTS because it is the recommended OS to use with ROS (Robot Operating System). I tried a few different desktops and found that I liked Mate the best. Also, when I first started learning computers, it was with HP-UX. So I have always felt right at home on linux.
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As for me, I was getting bored of Windows and want to explore something else apart from Mac & Windows.
The main reason for me to switch from Windows to Linux using Ubuntu Unity first was my NOKIA N900, This device was the spark when I went deep customizing and learned about terminal usage.
Due to this device which is my favorite till now. I have switched slowly from dual OS to Solo OS. Since 2016 till now, am fully using Linux with out any Windows in my Laptops. No more Windows Dominance.
I used Ubuntu Gnome for a while but did not like it, Dull boring. When I have discovered Ubuntu Mate and explored it. Till now it is main favorite OS.
Like @mendy I was using Ubunutu and did not like the change to the unity UI so I looked around for some other option. I tried Manjaro for about a year but found it was too easy to break so I moved to Mint Mate which I used for a few years before I got a Pi and installed Ubunutu Mate on that. So that both my machines were similar in available software I decided to come back to Ubunutu for my laptop and use Mate on that too so that is what I am writing this on.
My original motivation to come to Linux at all was to be able to play games on my corporate laptop when travelling as I could boot from an external disk and get perfectly good performance.
I started with Linux back in school. When I started my first comp sci class in 2000 I was introduced to Red Linux (I think it was version 6). I loved what I used to on my way back home I drove by BestBuy (a retail store here in the US) and picked up Mandrake Linux ... for Windows. That's how I got into using Linux.
We are a low income family, and that has a huge influence on our IT choices. I am a long time Mac user (since 1994, Apple II before that), I need the convenience of the Mac's filing system and its user configurable access, MS Windows never was an option for me. Until 2010 or 11 my wife shared my Mac, using the browser, mail, and photos apps, then I discovered that Ubuntu Linux provided a near-enough Mac equivalent for her use, so we were able to afford a low cost computer for her, by replacing Windows with Ubuntu. She began with Ubuntu Gnome, but reverted to a 2nd hand Mac when Ubuntu replaced the Gnome desktop with a grossly inferior one. A couple of years ago she wanted a laptop and I discovered Maté and installed it on a low cost laptop for her (again in lieu of Windows), and she has continued to use Maté since then. However, even with some technical background I find it difficult to install and set up Linux and resolve issues on it, and my wife will find it impossible to maintain a Linux computer when I'm gone (which may not be long, I am 76 y.o. - she's a bit younger), so we are planning to replace her Maté computer with a Mac in the near future.
For more than a decade I have been hoping that the Linux community would provide a low cost Mac alternative, but Maté is the closest I've found, and it still doesn't quite make the grade, it lacks the user friendliness of the Mac and it is still too difficult to set up and maintain, it is still fundamentally a nerd's OS instead of a genuinely user focussed OS. I have seen some other distros touted as Mac alternatives, but all they do is try to look like a bit like a Mac desktop, they lack the true functionality of the Mac. It is as if nobody in the Linux development community has ever actually used a Mac and discovered what it actually is that makes it so much better than anything else out there, which is a great pity, because I am no lover of the Apple Computer company, but I am stuck with the Mac because there is no genuine functional alternative to the Mac OS.
Summing up: What brought my wife over to Linux was the fact that the Gnome and Maté desktops were near enough to a Mac equivalent for her computer use (the user interface is the issue, not the OS itself). What did NOT bring me over was the fact that no Linux user interface I’ve found is quite near enough to the Mac, functionally, for me - how it works is the issue, not how it looks. What will take my wife back to the Mac is the degree of technical expertise required to install and 'housekeep' and problem solve on Linux. We've given Linux a go for about 12 years, but it still hasn't developed to the point where it provides what we mere users actually want, and that is taking us back away from it.
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Hello Ubuntu MATE Community! Last year my brother gave my his 10 years old PC(AMD Athlon II x2 250 3MHz with 4G of RAM. I put a new SSD 128 G, new fan and PSU. After I needed an OS that can run on this old machine. From some podcast Goinglinux, Destination Linux, and others, I remembered that exits some distro that could run on very old machine. I gave a shat to Ubuntu Mate and it works flawleslly. Right now at my home I use this machine. Yes it is a slow, but I use especially for some Python and Bash scripts.
My journey to Linux started May 4 2019, but I still fill like a newbie in Linux world.
Can I ask you people how old are your machine?
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Welcome to the community Virlan/@vasile
I'm on a 2009 dell desktop, intel c2q-9400 cpu, 8GB ram & spinning rust drive. I could use another somewhat newer/faster box but this works for me and is quieter.
A long time ago, I switched from Windows XP to Ubuntu 8.04 and never looked back. Have been using Ubuntu on different Thinkpads without any major issues for years now.
Hated Unity at first, but then I got really into it and was not a happy camper when Canonical abandoned it. When Ubuntu 18.04 came around, I tried Gnome and it felt like such a big step backwards to me compared to Unity, so I started looking for other options and found Ubuntu Mate.
Have been using Ubuntu Mate for a few years now and am very happy and grateful 
Thank you for warm greeting! It's nice machine your intel c2q-9400.
As a long time OS X user I eventually became a windows user (I still enjoy the windows 8 experience) but trying to setup a development environment was REALLY painful compared to OS X. I played with knoppix in the early 2000s but never really stuck. Once I stumbled across the Ubuntu podcast and got to “know” Martin Wimpress I really respected his outlook and take on things. I know the Linux community has a wide spectrum of users and stances of all free or nothing and some people who could not care about any of the freedom aspects. I appreciated the middle ground that this project takes. I flip between fedora and mate but its all down to pipewire integration (I do a bit of audio daw recording)
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I was brought into this distribution a while ago while looking for other alternatives. 5 years ago, I was using Raspbian on my Raspberry Pi 3B and used that for everything. I found Ubuntu MATE (20.04 LTS) and quickly fell in love with that. After that day, it was quickly decided I was never going back. Today, I use Ubuntu 22.04 LTS on a Raspberry Pi 400 because it works amazing.
I was having a problem with a cursor and one of the hypotheses was that it might be caused by the operating system. So I have uninstalled Windows and installed Ubuntu. The problem was not in OS and when I wanted to come back I've realized XP is obsolete and I would need to buy a new PC to run smoothly with higher Win so I stayed with Ubuntu (one of the things I really like on it - much faster and no need to install PDAs). The reason why I chose Ubuntu was a friend of mine has it and I was wondering that he can help in the beginning. And MATE is a clear choice for those who transit from Windows.
CapsLock for changing language layout was disabled by gnome 5 years ago. Then, I chose Mate because it supports setting CapsLock key for changing language layout. CapsLock is the easiest key for typing 10 fingers in two languages.
I started by Mandrake 2 decades ago. Mandrake became mandriva and stopped updating. Ubuntu seems the best option.
Windows me was a pain to use, win2000/2003 was better but thats when i started with knoppix 3.? It was good but later i did realize that ubuntu was easier to use.
Kde3.3 was great and then i switched to gnome.
Stock normal Debian i did not use. Why?Software was too often outdated in stable repository. But the testing was buggy so i switched to ubuntu as it was a very fast system. feisty Fawn , 14.10, 12.04 were realeases i do remember as great ones.
Around the terrible time of gtk2 to 3 transition i used lxde, icewm and unity. But when mate was ported to gtk3 i used mate. Before that gnome flashback.
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