
MATE Desktop Environment - based2
http://www.mate-desktop.org/
======
cisstrd
hmmh without trying to talk negatively about it, why is this on front page? am
I missing something here?

What happened: people who were dissatisfied with gnome 3.x forked gnome 2 (a
long time ago), created the Mate Desktop Environment, and that's pretty much
it.

somewhat ancient history and the site has nothing of particular interest to
offer... (no revolutionary milestone or anything of that sort)

~~~
desdiv
That just means you weren't one of the ten thousand[0] today. But rest
assured, there _were_ thousands of readers who weren't aware of Mate before
and are now.

[0] [https://xkcd.com/1053/](https://xkcd.com/1053/)

~~~
cisstrd
not at all my intention to poke fun at anyone though, it's hard to judge if
something which is common knowledge for oneself might not be well known in
general

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ferrari8608
"The name “MATE”, pronounced Ma-Tay, comes from yerba maté, a species of holly
native to subtropical South America. Its leaves contain caffeine and are used
to make infusions and a beverage called mate."

Neat! And here I've been pronouncing it like the English word "mate".

~~~
userbinator
The beverage, when consumed hot, is also classified as a probable carcinogen:
[http://www.inchem.org/documents/iarc/vol51/03-mate.html](http://www.inchem.org/documents/iarc/vol51/03-mate.html)

~~~
petecox
Which is possibly more to do with drinking scoldingly hot liquid than the
chemical composition.

My late father had oesophageal cancer from drinking up to a dozen cups of tea
a day, with reflux.

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zxcvcxz
Since switching to GNOME 3 I can't use any other DE because none of them can
emulate the workspace management of GNOME 3.

~~~
GhotiFish
Has gnome 3 changed the way it does workspace management or something? The
only difference I remember from Gnome 3's workspace management and virtually
every other implementation was that it adjusted the number of virtual desktops
dynamically. As opposed to the common case of a fixed number.

Is there something else it's doing?

~~~
gkop
I like it because the basic tiling is good enough, the spotlight is pleasing,
and it's mainstream and reliable (try it with Debian Jessie!). The workspace
management is as good as Compiz 0.8.4 was, wouldn't say it's any better (now
I'm curious!).

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sdfin
The last time I tried it, with Ubuntu Mate, I percieved it had more bugs than
Xubuntu. Xubuntu comes with xfce. I find that xfce looks very similar to mate
but runs more smoothly and it feels more polished. At least I don't remember
seeing errors related to the UI with xfce, unlike the experience with mate.

~~~
exception_e
IMO, MATE on Linux Mint has been wonderful for the last year or so.

Would recommend for desktop.

~~~
dave_sullivan
I am also a big fan of mint, have been using 3-4 years (and before that Debian
> Ubuntu > Gentoo > red hat > slackware). Mint with cinnamon is also
interesting.

I'm thinking of trying Ubuntu mate in a new build though, there's a new
version out that's supposedly very usable (previous versions have been
strongly beta apparently). Clearly, distros rise and fall.

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loeg
I wish they had kept the GNOME application names (Nautilus, File-roller, ...)
that I am familiar with instead of renaming them. Sure, they are forks, but
spiritually similar. Perhaps "MATE Nautilus," etc., would have been fine.

~~~
swayvil
Agreed. Caja and Pluma is awkward.

~~~
nailer
Or just File Manager or whatever the other thing does. One of the things that
isn't so great is dealing with every small piece of software having its own
branding.

~~~
grimoald
Please not. When I have a problem with a program I want to know what to type
into Google. I'm using LXDE and in some apps you won't even see its name in
the about window.

~~~
nailer
'Gnome file manager' wouldn't have relevant results?

~~~
grimoald
My system's language is not English, so I would have to either guess what
“Dokumentbetrachter” is called in English or get only results in German, which
are probably not that many.

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oxplot
I can't use anything _but_ MATE + Compiz and mostly because of Compiz'es
fantastic functionality and customizability. I'm talking about color filters,
grid plugin, and endless others that have no equivalent elsewhere.

~~~
gkop
Has Compiz improved in the last couple years? 0.8.4 was great, 0.9.8 was
garbage. I wrote it off as garbage hijacked by Canonical exclusively to
support Unity. (Gnome 3 is pretty much now a fine replacement for Compiz 0.8.4
imo)

~~~
4bpp
I use the 0.8 series myself, and it does its job without making me pine for
any particular improvements. As far as I can tell, there are occasional
attempts at reviving development popping up every now and then, but none of
them go far since the set of people who remain if you take out Ubuntu, GNOME 3
and KDE users (each of which has its own compositor) and then also remove all
those who are using niche window managers for their minimalism and lower
resource usage is very small.

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chris_wot
I'm curious now what stops people from using Linux on the desktop. There were
significant issues a few years ago, but they now appear to be addressed.

What are the problems with Linux on the desktop?

~~~
kough
Can't believe someone hasn't written this already: fonts. I've used Debian and
Arch and had massive trouble a) figuring out what fonts are installed, b) how
to install new fonts, c) getting them to not look like absolute shit. Example
case: trying to use Adobe's "Source Code Pro" font with Debian's default
terminal, at around 12-14px, on a 2560x1440 screen. I could get it to look
good at 10px, and at 18px, but nowhere in between. One of the most frustrating
experiences ever. To this day my font size is smaller than I'd like.

Another example: any font rendering in a web browser. Generally terrible.

~~~
edcastro
Font is actually pretty much straight forward nowadays with most distros. You
just need to enable lcd rgb subpixel rendering and thats it.

I use the Croscore set of fonts, the ones based on the Arial/Times/Courier
that Google uses on the Chromebook and for me, it looks even better than on
Windows or OSX.

This is my config:
[https://github.com/edgard/dotfiles/blob/master/config/fontco...](https://github.com/edgard/dotfiles/blob/master/config/fontconfig/fonts.conf)

~~~
TheLogothete
Are you serious?

"X" is pretty great nowadays, you just need to enable some obscure option.

And that's the problem of linux. It's like that for everything.

~~~
izacus
That option is enabled on most distros by default. Fonts on Ubuntu,
elementaryOS, Fedora and other distros look just fine.

I'd you are building your own desktop from building blocks in Arch or similar
then configuring obscure options is what you chose to do.

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swayvil
Presently using it. Been using it for a couple years. I prefer it over all
other desktops.

------
known
MATE is 2nd best for me after tint2 [https://www.maketecheasier.com/configure-
andcustomize-openbo...](https://www.maketecheasier.com/configure-andcustomize-
openbox/)

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smegel
Using it on Fedora, love it.

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xutopia
What happened to Gnome?

~~~
cisstrd
Gnome changed some things with Gnome 3.x (which was not recently) and some
people were dissatisfied with it, so they forked Gnome 2.x, created the Mate
Desktop Environment and that's it. Nothing happened to Gnome, it's alive and
kicking.

~~~
r3bl
If I'm not mistaken, MATE is far away from being the only fork of the 2.x
version.

~~~
sunnyps
If you're referring to Cinnamon, that's actually a fork of Gnome 3.

------
ronnier
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