[HN Gopher] Mate Desktop 1.24
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Mate Desktop 1.24
Author : ashitlerferad
Score : 88 points
Date : 2020-02-11 19:15 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mate-desktop.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (mate-desktop.org)
| HerrMonnezza wrote:
| I really really wish Ubuntu had decided to ship MATE as their
| default desktop at the time of the GNOME 2 to 3 transition,
| instead of trying to create their own DE, abandon it 4 years
| later, and then reverting on GNOME3 ...
| mongol wrote:
| How does Mate compare to XFCE? Not as "which is better" but as
| "what are the main differences"?
| kop316 wrote:
| XFCE is designed from the get go to be very light weight. On my
| laptop I average ~300 MB Ram usage idling with XFCE.
|
| MATE is the spiritual successor to Gnome 2, which isn't as
| light weight (but they haven't tried to add things to make it
| bloated, and gnome 2 was never too resource intensive). It is
| taking ~850 MB idling on that same laptop.
| jl6 wrote:
| I switched to XFCE away from Gnome 3 after becoming frustrated
| with Nautilus's lack of type-ahead-find. I am perfectly happy
| with XFCE now. I'd be interested to hear from users with
| experience of both XFCE and MATE how they compare, as they seem
| to have similar design goals.
| dleslie wrote:
| Mate is easily the best Linux DE available; I love that they're
| focusing on fixing bugs and incremental improvements to keep pace
| with hardware improvements, rather than chasing unneeded software
| features.
| dyingkneepad wrote:
| Gnome 2 was a very shiny and polished desktop environment. Its
| death (in favor of Gnome 3) meant a lot of people who contributed
| to it (e.g., me) got fragmented into Mate, Cinnamon, Xfce and
| others. I wonder what would have happened if Gnome was still a
| usable thing and this massive migration out of it was not
| necessary. Would we have fought over some other problem and
| forked regardless? Would we all have worked together to make it
| even more awersome?
|
| It also saddens me that Red Hat insists on dumping its money in
| Gnome 3. I would love if they were putting their resources in
| improving something I actually use :).
| Nux wrote:
| Super grateful for this project, I use it every day on all my
| computers.
|
| Maybe it's the age talking, but to me it feels like Gnome2/MATE
| is the peak of the desktop paradigm. Also Windows XP/7, in terms
| of UI/X.
|
| People took the desktop for what it was and tried to make the
| most of it.
|
| Nowadays most DEs, including Windows feel like they are made for
| a phone or a tablet.
| aelo wrote:
| I'm honestly really happy with GnomeShell once I install the
| extensions "dash to dock" and "workspace matrix".
| bombela wrote:
| I use mate desktop with i3 for the windows management. This means
| everything just works. Volume keys, brightness, usb storage auto-
| mounting, complex audio configuration, printers configuration,
| lock screen, battery management, mouse settings, external
| displays settings, screenshots and so on and so forth. I get the
| best of both world. Without Mate, I would have to hack everything
| together and spend days configuring everything by hand.
|
| If you want to replicate this setup: Start with Ubuntu Mate.
| Install i3 via apt. Select i3 on the login screen. In your i3
| configuration add the following: exec --no-
| startup-id exec mate-settings-daemon exec --no-startup-id
| exec mate-screensaver exec --no-startup-id exec mate-
| power-manager exec --no-startup-id exec nm-applet
|
| Welcome to the year of Desktop on Linux.
| city41 wrote:
| I think an even better approach is to tell MATE to use i3 as
| its window manager. It's totally seamless and works perfectly.
|
| Here is a blog post I wrote on how to do it:
| https://www.mattgreer.org/articles/mate-and-i3/
|
| I also created a MATE panel applet so you don't need to have an
| i3bar.
| humblebee wrote:
| I'll have to give this a try. I do something similar but with
| gnome[0]. However, I have run into some weird issues when
| opening the gnome control center which results in it crashing.
|
| [0] https://github.com/i3-gnome/i3-gnome
| Tenoke wrote:
| I've tried tiling WMs a few times, maybe 4 years ago last and
| liked them (inclduing i3) but at least at the time there were
| too many problems.
|
| If everything works now, Id be willing to try i3 when I install
| ubuntu 20.04.
|
| Is it now easy to set up a launcher/start bar with a nice
| battery/volume/wifi etc. indicator? That work both when I click
| on them and via keys and with the icons visibly changing based
| on the current state?
|
| Do all Windows open normally? Do they all fullscreen normally?
| Which don't?
|
| Do you get any crashes?
|
| Are there any WM-specific settings/fixes you have to tweak more
| often than once every 6 months?
| pfranz wrote:
| I just started diving into i3 a few weeks ago. This is using
| a VMWare Fusion VM and Fedora 31. So I'm not fully evaluating
| things like volume, brightness, but battery/charging
| indicators work. Most of the instructions I followed were ~4
| years old and worked almost out of the box. A few minor
| things have changed, like most people have switched from
| Compton to Picom, but the old packages are still there and
| work (unless you need newer features/bugfixes).
|
| Windows seem to work as expected. Dialogs/pop ups show up as
| floating windows, but everything else worked well as a tiled
| window. Fullscreen worked fine. I haven't used a wide variety
| of apps. Mostly a few browsers and terminals, but I was doing
| some Qt dev in it, so I was playing a bit with windowing.
|
| > Is it now easy to set up a launcher/start bar...That work
| both when I click on them and via keys...
|
| From what I've seen of i3, all of the status bars are text
| printed from a separate program that gets executed
| periodically. This makes it very flexible and with things
| like font-awesome you can have emoji and icons, but afaik you
| can't click or have pop ups. Other tiling WMs, like
| AwesomeWM, will do this.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| been using i3 since 2 years now after dwm, blackbox and
| others. i3 commands have quickly become muscle memory and I
| don't look back.
|
| > Is it now easy to set up a launcher/start bar with a nice
| battery/volume/wifi etc. indicator?
|
| I've been using bumblebee-status for that and it works like a
| charm. It's very modular too: https://github.com/tobi-wan-
| kenobi/bumblebee-status
|
| here are a couple of dotfiles:
|
| .config/i3/config: https://pastebin.com/n9rAWNhf
|
| .config/i3/scripts/i3exit https://pastebin.com/CxETEW9H
|
| I highly recommend to use i3-save-tree to dump the json into
| a file (e.g. workspace_[number].json) to get your terminals
| (or any other applications) set up when logging in exactly
| the way you want.
|
| sometimes the json needs editing (here is what it would look
| like in my setup):
|
| .config/i3/workspace-1.json https://pastebin.com/7VGbQShy
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| Homestly, nothing changed. It's just (imo) hard to figure out
| yourself if nobody tells you that it's possible.
|
| The other way around is also possible btw (starting
| gnome/mate/xfce and starting i3 right at login. I personally
| preferred the parents way as well though (using xfce though)
|
| You won't be using Wayland with i3 however, and weren't they
| going to prefer that with Ubuntu 20 and onwards?
| bombela wrote:
| I find the i3 documentation excellent.
|
| On Ubuntu Mate, when you install i3, the login manager let
| you select it. There is nothing special to do.
|
| i3 doesn't work on wayland. I have hear sway is a great
| alternative. I will have to try it one day!
| bombela wrote:
| I have been using this setup since around 2014. At the time I
| used Gnome 2. And switched to Ubuntu Mate whenever Ubuntu
| switched to Unity/Gnome 3 (I am not even sure which one it is
| now). It has always been rock solid. i3 never crashed on me.
| And you can hot-reload it anyway. I last rebooted my work
| laptop 103 days ago. It goes to sleep few times per day. And
| the battery last about 10h (down from 15h when it was brand
| new).
|
| For starting application I use a launcher called rofi via a
| shortcut. For status indicators and so on, I have configured
| the i3 status bar (i3bar) to give me battery status, cpu
| usage, different timezones of interest etc. The only fancy
| thing I did, was to use cute unicode glyph to indicate
| charging status ().
|
| i3bar has a "system tray" section. Where nm-applet will dock
| its wifi indicator/control icon. And other chat and
| conference applications will dock theirs little icons.
|
| I have no problem with any windows. You can customize
| everything either statically in the config or on the fly. For
| example, my chats applications are always moved to the
| scratch space area when running. I can summon them with a
| shortcut at any time from any desktop. I also have a shortcut
| to mark any floating window as sticky across any virtual
| desktop. This is useful for video conferencing, to keep the
| video visible at all time. Etc.
| imharvey wrote:
| This gave me flashbacks to Gnome 2 and how much I loved it.
| p1necone wrote:
| After Gnome 3 and the abomination of wasted screen real estate
| that was Unity released I switched to using XFCE on Linux
| environments and haven't really found anything better since.
| It's so snappy even on crappy hardware and is customizable
| enough.
| thepangolino wrote:
| I actually liked unity. Putting the task bar on the side was
| a great idea at an age when screen started getting flatter
| and flatter.
|
| The HUD(?) was a great concept allowing easy Dutch within an
| apps menus.
| p1necone wrote:
| My problem was with the size of all the UI elements, it
| seemed to me that a lot of it was designed with a "touch
| first, M+K second" focus.
| Niccizero wrote:
| That's probably Gnome, Ubuntu was pretty manegeable as a
| KB+M desktop. I'd say it's as KB+M oriented as OS X.
| Gnome is more like the Ipad OS.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > Putting the task bar on the side was a great idea at an
| age when screen started getting flatter and flatter.
|
| That's hardly innovation though since most DEs over the
| past 2+ decades that I can think of would let you move the
| taskbar (if they had one) anyway.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Indeed even Windows 95 let you do that.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I agree - taskbar on the side is the best layout. It's very
| common on Macs and you can do it in Windows 10 now too.
|
| The problem with Unity was that it was buggy as hell, and
| the launcher was really badly styled. Huge gaps between
| icons, the search filter was unusable, etc.
| zapzupnz wrote:
| I was always a KDE 3 kinda guy. I tried TDE, which is to KDE 3
| as Mate is to GNOME 2, and ... boy, you really appreciate how
| the Mate project managed to keep everything good about GNOME 2
| but modernise at the same time.
| unixhero wrote:
| That is the idea!
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Weirdly enough I loved Gnome 2 but for whatever odd reason I
| prefer some of the other DE's out there. I use Budgie (on
| Ubuntu) at work though it has quirks, otherwise Gnome 3 is ok
| or I just go for KDE. It definitely felt like Gnome went from
| all these amazing customizations to being so limited though.
| platypii wrote:
| Really grateful that Mate exists. To this day, gnome3 has not
| reached parity with gnome2 on flexibility of configuration. I
| don't even make a lot of customizations to my desktop, but having
| the option when I need it is really key.
| jahlove wrote:
| Agreed with everything said here. The crazy thing is, Gnome3
| was released over 10 years ago!
| ianai wrote:
| Yep. It's like they decided to copy the worst of windows 8.
| Lammy wrote:
| It predates Windows 8. More like copy the worst of the iPad
| imo.
| pizza234 wrote:
| GNOME doesn't reach parity on configurability because... it's
| by design.
|
| There is an extensive post on the subject:
| https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/gnome-et-al-
| rotti.... It's tragicomic to read ("And I have no idea what
| XFCE is or does sorry.")
|
| I'd say that the GNOME devs have Jobs' ego and intention, but
| none of his talent(s). But at least they have branding(tm)! /s
| prox wrote:
| Good grief. What a bunch of territorial behavior! I really
| don't understand where their arguments are coming from
| either.
| Lammy wrote:
| It doesn't happen very often any more, but when people always
| used to ask why I didn't like GNOME 3 I'd just point them to
| the devs' own words on the mailing list:
| https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-shell-
| list/2011-June/m...
| badsectoracula wrote:
| Here is a more recent effort in the same vein by some GNOME
| developers (and developers for GNOME):
| https://stopthemingmy.app/
| pizza234 wrote:
| From that thread:
|
| > Can we declare that GNOME Shell doesn't have themes, and
| prevent people from posting screenshots of GNOME Shell with
| a modified theme or with a modified top panel?
|
| o_O
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| Used MATE a couple of times. I'd say it is the most beautiful and
| a generally well done lightweight DE. Takes me back to early
| Ubuntu days
| nbrempel wrote:
| Is Wayland support a big deal? Or do most desktop environment
| support both Wayland and X11 in some way? I'm not familiar with
| how it works.
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