Ubuntu Mate | Hacker News Reader

Ubuntu Mate

ubuntu-mate.org

92 pointsroschdal71 comments

"Show HN" is for sharing your personal work: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html. Is that the case here? If so, please let me know at hn@ycombinator.com and I'll be happy to restore "Show HN" and delete this comment.

I took it out for now because there are other Show HNs in your submission history which make it look like there might have been a misunderstanding of the category.

I've tried it and it reminded me of the old Debian using Gnome 2 which I absolutely enjoyed. I ended up using the "MacOS" theme in Mate which comes with useful key-bindings and shortcuts. Plus, it isn't much of a resource hog.

Reminds me of Ubuntu 8.04, the first version I tried back in 2008. I personally find that Mate’s UI didn’t aged well.

I wonder why this is popping up on HN’s frontpage.

Mates UI is Gnome 2 by intention. It is a matter of taste.

Isn’t it a fork?

Yes, it's based on the last release of Gnome 2.

MATE belongs to the class of traditional-metaphor/resource-light desktop environments. Looking good is a secondary target.

The direct competitor is XFCE. There are a couple of advantages I personally find over XFCE:

- XFCE has a very severe lack of resources; in worst case, this translates to bugs (even severe) not being fixed for a very long time

- MATE has a very flexible interface (it's actually impressive how they have exactly the opposite philosophy as the GNOME guys)

I've been a longtime XFCE user, but when a couple of bugs started affecting my workflow, I had to leave it.

The worst case has a been a bug where around 25% of the times (if not more), moving files via file manager caused the file manager to crash. This has gone unfixed for a very long time (at least 6 months).

Despite what some people believes, it's not possible to swap the default file manager. While it's technically feasible, DEs have their FM harcoded in some places (ie. Desktop), which causes subtle breakages if the default FM is swapped.

And the beauty of FOSS, contributing bug fixes and all that jazz?

>MATE belongs to the class of traditional-metaphor/resource-light desktop environments. Looking good is a secondary target.

Yup and the next step after that is "title wm" I've recently switched from XFCE to i3mw. So far it' been brilliant !

> Looking good is a secondary target.

What a terrible goal. Why not make it just as important as performance?

To me, performance is also secondary. Not getting in the way is the most important thing.

Personally, I value functionality > performance > looking good. Also, I think MATE looks great. :)

Because Pantheon et al already exist.

Holy shit... do you have a link handy to that file manager bug? I run XFCE and have for a while, but I've been seeing that issue lately and thought it was my (older) ssd going out. Hadn't thought it could be related to the DE.

Perhaps it's time to give MATE a try.

I don't have a reference unfortunately, but here's something similar (if not the same): https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2356

i switched from xfce to mate due to some hidpi issues (can't remember what exactly now). i like that it's lightweight, but primarily mate and xfce are the only two desktop environments i can find that let me swap out the window manager. gnome no longer does it, gnome-flashback is buggy, and kde says it should be possible but i've never managed it.

Yeah Mate is really meh. If I ever introduce users to Linux, it's Mint almost 100% of the time. Cinnamon is fairly stable and feels very much like windows. So far things haven't been bad for me but the moment I try anything besides cinnamon, people figure out how to break it.

I have always felt Ubuntu Mate to be especially lucrative to recommend to new users due to the existence of the great software boutique: https://ubuntu-mate.org/features/boutique/, welcome app introducing new users to Linux, Mate, and Foss, and the predefined layouts: https://ubuntu-mate.org/features/panel/

To anyone playing Steam games on Linux:

Steam -> Settings -> Steam Play -> Click "Enable Steam Play for all Titles"

And install Lutris https://lutris.net/

I haven't figured out how to use Lutris with Steam nor have I discovered what the advantage would be. Or do you mean installing Lutris regardles of steam?

You can launch Steam games with Lutris. It has API integration.

This is the first time I've heard of lutris. Quick google search suggests that it is similar to proton.

It has functions that are similar to proton.

It's more like an alternate game library/launcher. I mostly use it to manage emulators, while the rest of my games are through steam or apt.

I'm thinking of buying the Raspberry Pi 400 and I see Ubuntu MATE indeed has a 64-bit Raspberry Pi port. While the "400" apparently has some compatibility issues in some scenarios, it's essentially a higher clocked Pi 4. Assuming it's working, I wonder if it's performant as a Raspberry Pi OS alternative to the official distro? I think I prefer a cleaner MATE over the default stuff.

Edit: Oh I see now I essentially posted in parallel with another question about the Pi running this. Well, there are images for it at least!

As I said in the other P400 thread, yes, this is quite nice to use. Pay attention to which apps you use: electron/node based apps will quickly make this a drag. Use script/ad blockers (umatrix...) to save on web resources. Be weary of e.g. bash prompts that traverse the file system (to show git status or such) as these things will be slow on an sd card system.

I have a Pi 4 (8 GB) with Ubuntu MATE and the main flaw I've run into is that a lot of programs don't scale down to the little 1024x600 LCD I hoped to use with it. Of course, that will be a problem with any distro on such a small screen. On a regular monitor it's just a bit sluggish, but no worse and perhaps a little faster than the official OS. Plenty usable as a low-end desktop.

I don't think it has even come close to exhausting 8 GB (looks like the 400 only has a 4 GB version?). I just wanted some head room there.

GNOME 3 was a mistake, Unity was even more of a mistake.

Anything to like about Ubuntu Mate is better in Mint Mate.

It's Ubuntu without the attempts at lock-in. But Debian Mint (Mate/Cinnamon/Gnome) is pretty OK too.

Personally, I have never understood why anybody installs Ubuntu. Ubuntu was better for a couple of years, right at the start, and has just gotten worse since. The only thing it does better is that an installer that understands current hardware is easier to find. (Debian has it too, but tries to hide it, because "nonfree".)

So, installing Debian Mint is the best of all worlds. Once you have installed Debian Mint, you have regular Debian.

At least with some older release MATE team was forking some system libraries which caused it to be incompatible with actual releases. Which in turn meant that when a critical security flaw was found and patched the patch couldn't be taken into use in MATE systems since it would break all software delivered with the image.

I suspect things have since been fixed, but just something to make sure before you start to use the distro.

Not my cup of tea but I've been using it on al old laptop that I use to run some local game servers and it does the job.

I had MATE running on both GuixSD and NixOS in 2019. For some reason, it wouldn't detect the F1 through F12 keys my QMK-based keyboard was sending. That's as far as I got before giving up, but it did look promising.

As other commenters said, Ubuntu Mate looks like Ubuntu 8.04, of which I too had my first year-long experience using Linux as a daily driver.

Anyone tried this on a raspberry pi? I currently use it as a media center but have only raspbian installed.

Yes, I've been running this on my P400 for about a week now. It's smooth, and the baseline memory pressure makes is quite usable for dog-fooding arm builds of my projects.

Ubuntu mate is a bit faster-moving than the Gnome ("main") Ubuntu in terms of features and neat little fixes.

Martin Wimpress (the main dev of Ubuntu Mate, at least he used to be, now he might be more busy with his other stuff at Canonical...?) has been really trying to push these board-specific images, and IMHO the quality is quite good.

I used to use Mate but I think maintaining GNOME 2 is an uphill battle. Now I use gnome-flashback with xmonad and don't really have any problems. On NixOS it's very simple to configure.

After Moore's law and major DEs fixing performance issues, will a lightweight DE improve the experience for, say a 2015 i5?

Do we have to install xcompmgr in Mate?

Ubuntu Mate is great for old laptops.

Nice to see that the drink Mate is slowly entering the consciousness of the rest of the world through both the most famous football player of the world as well as the programming world.

I take it whenever I have to work in a place with bad coffee.

I'm not a fan, but it sure beats bad coffee when all you need is something warm.

In order to reduce my coffee consumption, I've also tried drinking just warm water. It seems the Chinese recommend it.

Yeah in China cold water is considered bad for your health, although as far as I can tell this is more tradition than actual health advice, likely derived from the necessity of boiling water to make it safe to drink before safe running water.

It's common to add some green tea leaves and continually top up using the same leaves throughout the day.

Drinking warm water is very popular in India and considered to be more healthy than imbibing liquid at temperatures below body temperature.

[Pero]'s my favorite caffeine-free coffee replacement.

[Pero]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caro_%28drink%29?wprov=sfla1

Poe's law in action: I'm unsure whether you are mocking people who do not read the article, or if you actually failed to read the article and thought that Ubuntu Mate was some kind of Ubuntu-branded yerba mate.

I always thought that the 'mate' in Ubuntu MATE was synonym with 'pal', but after checking it actually does come yerba maté : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATE_(software)

Oof that was pleasantly unexpected! Thanks for sharing!

Not a big fan of the MATE DE, but a big fan of the drink.

Maybe I should give the former another try just based on this.

It also explains why the color scheme is green :)

To me mate tastes like making a brew out of the contents of an ashtray.

I've tried it once. It tasted like ashtray and didn't help with focus, instead I've felt agitated and unreal. Even filtering in aeropress didn't help with that taste.

How did you prepare it in the first place?

In aeropress and in another occasion by avid yerba drinker.

If you're a soda drinker and ever in Germany, try a Club Mate. :-)

When I go to mate.de, the page says “Forbidden.”

It's an acquired taste, like wine, beer or coffee. But that shouldn't stop you from trying to find a blend that better suits your taste. I prefer softer brands mixed with a bit of mint.

I think adding sugar is disgusting, if you really need to add a small amount of honey. If it tastes like ashtray possibly the water was too hot.

As a British person, even though I have heard of mate (I've heard Argentinian people talk about it), I thought it was mate in the sense of friend until I read this comment.

Club Mate (and other derivatives) has been fueling the German hacker scene since the 90ies

It's unofficial slogan is "One get's used to it" which I think is also very fitting to this project. (Gotten used to Gnome 2, not wanting to switch to something else)

I would suggest they remove the screenshot of the Avengers movie given the amount of DMCA going on for such things... (loosely suggesting some open source software could be used for viewing pirated material.) Big Buck Bunny by the Blender Foundation could be a good replacement [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqz-KE-bpKQ

The case of youtube-dl using snippets of copyrighted material for testing is very different from showing a media player viewing copyrighted material. The former is easy to argue is breaking copyright protections while the latter is not.

We'll be in a very different world if VLC couldn't even show that it can play mainstream media in it (check out the screenshots over at https://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html)

I see what you're saying, but isn't showing screenshots of obviously copyrighted material just another form of testing?

No, testing (in terms of software testing) refers to the process of verifying something is working as expected. The test suite for youtube-dl is/was using snippets of DRM protected material to ensure that their anti-DRM techniques were working as expected.

Showing a screenshot of copyrighted material is just that, showing a screenshot of copyrighted material. Nothing is downloaded, asserted or even evaluated. For all we know, they can have a license for that material (or live in Germany, where ripping your owned DVD disks is legal).

Two vastly different things.

It's not showing a DVD or BluRay player, or a web-based streaming browser plugin. It's showing a clearly named Matroska video file containing a copyrighted movie that is very unlikely to be legally available in Matroska format.

Sorry there isn't a defense here that would stand up to review.

If you own the DVD or BluRay, there's nothing wrong with backing it up to a file named Avengers.PIRATED.BluRay.ReLEAsE.1080p.Cr4ked.mkv or whatever suits your fancy. And taking a screenshot of it would not be evidence of infringement, because there would be no infringement.

I understand your paranoia when it comes to the MPAA, and certainly there's nothing physically stopping them from becoming a thorn in someone's side. But let's be clear, they would be in the wrong.

Sorry what things?

This isn't a YouTube video.

What are they going to do?

Get whatever hosting company their with a boat load of bad press?

> This isn't a YouTube video.

You can get high-resolution copies of the Big Buck Bunny film and play it locally in the same what.

> What are they going to do?

Obviously this would be a malicious use of DMCA (as it has been with other cases of open source software), but they could:

* Tie them up in long and expensive legal battles, using the system itself to punish them

* Have their repositories DMCA'd

* Contact their service providers and have them revoke their services

I am just suggesting caution.

I would rather suggest not succumbing to self-censorship & chilling effects.

Though I find myself wondering whether a screenshot of a .mkv of a copyrighted film is really tactful for a Serious Project aimed at mainstream audience. Chilling effects again. Maybe the user just ripped his own DVD/BR for personal convenience.

It's not chilling effects. It's honest-to-god photographic evidence of breaking the law. Now it's a shit law that I certainly don't agree with, but it is law. MPAA would be fully within their legal rights to shut this project down, with prejudice, based on that screenshot. Why risk it?

What law prevents one from owning a movie on their hard drive? What if they purchased this movie?

The DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision, and similar laws on other jurisdictions.

> screenshot of a .mkv of a copyrighted film is really tactful for a Serious Project aimed at mainstream audience

Take a look at the VLC homepage. I think VLC is both a serious project and aimed at mainstream audience, but somehow they "got the balls" to use screenshots from Ironman and more.

I agree with your "not succumbing to self-censorship" in general.

That's one creepy looking bunny. Not the best choice either.

Yeah I think that if they still want to present the same movie, they could use the movie trailer instead.

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