Why I'm Heavily Considering Joining Team Green: Ubuntu MATE

londoed · 26 January 2020 17:05

Hey everyone,

I've recently become enamored with Ubuntu MATE and wrote an article about my past use of Linux and how Ubuntu MATE is checking all the boxes for me at the moment.

If you get a minute, check it out, and let me know which areas of the distribution I should explore next. It has now taken over my daily use laptop, a ThinkPad Edge E531, and might take over more of my machines in the future!

You can check out the article here.

Thanks for being such a wonderfully friendly and helpful community and obviously thank you to the development team for creating such a great operating system!

bornagainpenguin · 26 January 2020 17:48

Nice write up! As a fellow Gnome 2.x fan I welcome you aboard the good ship Mate!

I'm glad the options are available to switch things out but I always find myself coming back to the "Traditional" desktop option. It's the best of all worlds for me.

Klimate · 26 January 2020 18:42

Hello Eric, I have been using Ubuntu maté for about four years and fell in love with this bone like you! Your writings describe completely the pleasure which I feel when the magic operates on old computers centrino duo fluid, esthetic and modern that of happiness

Jesper · 27 January 2020 01:29

I just read you article and i fully agree with you.. Ubuntu MATE is so intuitive and incredible easy to use. I have tried so many distro's and i always ends up, going back to my trusty Ubuntu MATE! - Guess i have to stop distro hopping, the grass is more green on MATE

londoed · 28 January 2020 00:18

Thanks everyone for the responses and checking out the article, I really appreciate it.

Due to the interest, I've decided to contribute to the greater Linux community by writing a weekly blog about the latest interesting developments happening throughout the Linux world. It will not be Ubuntu MATE agnostic, however, I will likely detail my continued adventures with Ubuntu MATE in depth in the Personal News section. Also, any exciting news that drops in the Ubuntu MATE community will likely be at the very top of my selections!

If you would like to follow along, you can find the first issue here or follow the Linux++ Twitter account: @linux_plus_plus.

Constructive criticism is always welcome as I would like to improve upon the concept and make it truly unique as the weeks go by. Also, if there is any Ubuntu MATE specific material (or really anything Linux related) that you think needs to be included, go ahead a shoot me an email at [email protected].

Again, thanks for taking the time to read and I'm sure I'll see you all around these forums for quite a while to come!

mikeroyal · 28 January 2020 00:52

Hi @londoed,
Great work with the article I would also mention gaming on Ubuntu MATE. The software boutique store in Ubuntu MATE makes it easy to install and setup Twitch, Steam, and Lutris. Lastly, the NVIDIA hybrid graphics applet which let's you switch between using your integrated graphics and your dedicated GPU for better power efficiency.

londoed · 28 January 2020 02:31

That's a great idea. I definitely forgot to mention the Software Boutique, which was definitely super helpful when starting up a new system. I'm not much of a gamer, but I'm sure I could spare a couple hours for testing purposes

I do have a machine with an NVIDIA graphics card so maybe I'll give that a shot as well.

Thanks for your reply!

lostados · 28 January 2020 12:36

Very nice article. I´ve been using Ubuntu for over 10 years and also became a huge fan of MATE. When I first heard about it I thought "Ubuntu Mate" stood for a very-friendly flavour of Ubuntu... Then I tried and found it indeed very user-friendly and intuitive and adopted it for good. Sometimes I try other Linux distributions on an old Toshiba notebook: they can be very dashing and appealing to the eye but I never came across one comparable to MATE in terms of easy of use, as Jesper said.
Congratulations!

londoed · 29 January 2020 12:27

Thanks @lostados! It definitely is the perfect mixture of everything I want out of a desktop in this day and age. Can't wait to do a more in depth write up on it as I learn more and intermingle with the community for some time!

mark1961 · 31 January 2020 14:59

The only thing that keeps me installing Mint MATE instead of Ubuntu MATE in my (and my friends) PCs is the lack of pending updates indicator in Ubuntu MATE. I mean the little shield with green check mark in the system tray when everything is up to date and becomes a cross when updates are pending. Is it possible to add something like this to Ubuntu MATE?

londoed · 31 January 2020 22:14

Hey @mark1961! I would think it would definitely be possible to provide something like what Mint uses, however, I don't know if the developers would place that high on their priority list right now. You can always check the 20.04 thread here and see if there is anything like that in development right now.

I'm not sure about this because I run an update script on my system every day as it is, but I do think that there is probably an update notification pop-up window that appears when your system has updates available, similar to how it works in Ubuntu proper.

Someone else who updates from the GUI may have more information than I do on this though.

Bernie · 1 February 2020 02:22

actually the updater window does pop up as in Ubuntu proper, however I've found it is not very reliable at popping up so I personally just use apt, but there is a window that will occasionally pop up

johncallicrate · 2 February 2020 23:41

Eric, my story with linux is very similar!
After many years of different distros,
I am settled on Mate.
We also had an old IMac,
that sat unused, until I installed Mate on it,
and now it is used daily.

londoed · 3 February 2020 04:46

Yep @johncallicrate , it's an incredible thing. Never thought I would like something as much as Plasma or Cinnamon, but MATE is really such a great DE. The fact that it works on old hardware is just an incredible bonus imo.

mark1961 · 5 February 2020 12:25

Then if @Bernie is right in Ubuntu Mate there is at best a pending updates notification that "ocasionally" works? Typical Windows users can't set up a script to run update at boot or something like that. As @londoed said, it might not be a priority for developers but it should be. Very few things in personal computing are as important as keeping the OS properly patched and updated. The average user can't be trusted to remember to update the system periodically without proper notification.

tiox · 5 February 2020 20:41

I am sure it's just a piece of software that does apt checks behind the user's back. Beside, if you really want them to be up to date, just tell them to configure update-manager so it checks for updates daily via software-properties-gtk and if there are updates available, they will be asked to install them.

Ubuntu MATE by default also installs security updates automatically, so there is no issue with its defaults which would mandate any changes except for other software which checks for updates once weekly, presumably as a bandwidth-saving measure.

tiox · 6 February 2020 09:03

As for your earlier inquiry about Linux Mint's software, it is a piece of kit called mintUpdate.py which generates the shield icon. Whoever wants to knock it off and provide a notification daemon which works with Ubuntu that only generates an update status icon should be able to take a piece of their code which does that and incorporate it into a separate utility.

It would have to be both GTK3 and GTK2 compatible to cover the breadth of desktops Ubuntu has, so I can only assume whoever authors this would create a common package with general calls, and front-end apps to receive them using GTK3 and GTK2 maintained separately, along with its own icon theme as part of common makers can eventually override with their own specification in theme index files.