Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
Let me start this story by mentioning that I have been using Ubuntu since version 10.04. I really loved the OS interface that came with 10.04. I updated regularly from Ubuntu LTS to LTS, with a full clean install for 16.04 and 20.04 and finally upgraded to 22.04.
I hate to say this (as I’ve been behind Ubuntu for so long), but login issues were a problem… when trying to resume from the screen blanker – the gnome-screensaver. Only a reboot, or using tty to kill gnome-shell, would help. It was happening about every 4 days of up-time, where Gnome Shell started using more and more RAM, and the system became unstable after those few days where the RAM footprint of Gnome Shell was over 1.5GB.
Granted, I had a lot of extensions running, but this also happened when the Gnome Shell extensions were not started/loaded. Please understand, I am NOT slamming Ubuntu. It is still my favourite OS, with the Gnome Desktop environment. But for me, the issues had become far more annoying than I could handle.
Enter Ubuntu MATE.
I decided that I would just add the desktop environment by opening my Gnome Terminal and typing:
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y sudo apt install ubuntu-mate-desktop
After a few minutes, the install was complete. I logged out of Ubuntu, and logged in, and chose Ubuntu MATE. The OS loaded extremely fast! I was greeted with the MATE desktop, which looked almost exactly like Ubuntu 10.04 (prior to the Ubuntu dock).
I immediately went into the Control Center and clicked on Appearance. I was pleased that, in addition to several coloured Yaru themes, My MC-OS-Mojave theme was still there!
There are so many applets to customize MATE. I chose the Pantheon theme, with the Plank dock. Note that the Clock/weather widget is supplied by My Weather Indicator, and the CPU/RAM widget is supplied by Conky and Conky Manager.
The MATE install added Caja as File Manager, MATE Terminal, Pluma as the text editor, among others, but I have chosen (thus far) to continue to use Nautilus, Gnome terminal and Gedit. I guess that is one of the cool things of adding the Desktop environment rather than a fresh install of Ubuntu MATE.
The theme choices in Ubuntu MATE are many. Many many! You can change just about every aspect in the windows, icons, window borders, and the pointer. You can also choose from several built-in panels. You can have the top panel set with the MATE application menu and the indicators for running programs, as well as a panel on the bottom of the desktop. There are several types with predefined layouts but each of these is also customizable. You can choose from one that works like a MAC with the top bar displaying the options available for the particular program. There is also one that resembles the Windows 9 and 10 taskbar and Menu of applications. The small Ubuntu MATE logo at the top-left is the applications menu. (I removed the word menu to keep it cleaner, in my opinion).
I also use a custom theme Mc-OS-MJV dark. While my theme isn’t 100% MAC, it is certainly MAC OS inspired.
I really like the retro looking desktop and enjoy the thoroughly modernized version of Ubuntu that is MATE.
I immediately enrolled in the Ubuntu MATE tech forums: https://ubuntu-mate.community
I absorbed myself into reading as much as I could about my new OS as well as looking for any issues I might face, and stated bugs, etc, by reading the forum.