Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
It has been quite a while since Full Circle carried a review of Ubuntu MATE. In fact, the last review was of the very first release, Ubuntu MATE 14.10, written by Michael Davies and published way back in Full Circle issue 93 in January 2015. Since Ubuntu MATE is now on its 20th release, I thought it was time to see how things are progressing for this Linux distribution. The current version is Ubuntu MATE 23.10, which was released on 12 October, 2023. As an interim release, it is supported for just nine months, but the next version, 24.04, will be a long term support release, with three years of updates. It is expected out on 25 April, 2024 and supported until April, 2027.
Cela fait assez longtemps depuis que le Full Circle a publié une critique d'Ubuntu MATE. En fait, la dernière critique était celle de la toute première version, Ubuntu MATE 14.10, écrite par Michael Davies et publiée jadis dans le numéro 93 du Full Circle en janvier 2015. Puisque Ubuntu MATE sort sa vingtième version, je pensais que le moment était venu de voir la progression des choses dans cette distributioni Linux.
La version actuelle est Ubuntu MATE 23.10, sortie le 12 octobre 2023. En tant que version intérimaire, elle n'est prise en charge que pendant juste neuf mois, mais la prochaine version, la 24.04, sera une version à support à long terme avec trois années de mises à jour. Elle est sortie le 25 avril 2024 et sera prise en charge jusqu'en avril 2027. Background The MATE desktop got its start for the same reason that the Unity interface was created for Ubuntu and the Cinnamon desktop for Linux Mint. That story goes back to 2011 and the GNOME desktop project’s decision to ditch the highly successful and popular GNOME 2 desktop that had been introduced in 2002, and replace it with something completely new: GNOME 3. At its public release in April, 2011, it would be fair to say that GNOME 3 was not well received. A few people actually did like it but a lot didn’t, including not just users, but developers too. Linux kernel founder, Linus Torvalds, personally switched from GNOME to Xfce at the time, calling GNOME 3 an “unholy mess”. Developers quickly started work on replacements like Unity and Cinnamon. That was a good move as LinuxQuestions surveys done before and after GNOME 3 came out showed how much its popularity slipped once people tried it out. In the earlier survey, GNOME 2 had been the number one Linux desktop with 45% use. Post release, GNOME 3 was at 19% and was number two, behind KDE. While Unity and later Cinnamon became great alternatives, what about the idea of just resurrecting the abandoned GNOME 2, since it had been so popular? One developer from Argentina, Perberos, decided to do just that. He took the GNOME 2 code and forked it, naming his project MATE. His first release was on 19 August, 2011, only four months after GNOME 3 came out. By 8 November, 2013, MATE was available as a Debian desktop and by January, 2014, it was on Arch Linux as well.
Contexte
Le bureau MATE a été démarré pour la même raison pour laquelle l'interface Unity a été créé pour Ubuntu et le bureau Cinnamon pour Linux Mint. Cette histoire remonte à 2011 et la décision du projet de bureau GNOME d'abandonner le bureau GNOME 2 qui était une grande réussite et très populaire et existait depuis 2002, et le remplacer par quelque chose d'entièrement nouvelle : GNOME 3. Quand elle est sortie publiquement en avril 2011, l'on doit reconnaître que GNOME 3 n'a pas était bien reçu. En fait, quelques personnes l'ont vraiment beaucouop aimé, maais beaucoup de gens ne l'aimaient point, y compris pas seulement les utilisateurs, mais aussi les développeurs. Le créateur du noyau Linux, Linus Torvalds, a remplacé GNOME par Xfce à l'époque, en disant que GNOME 3 était un fiasco complet.
Les développeurs ont rapidement commencé à travailler sur des remplaçants comme Unity et Cinnamon. C'était une bonne chose, car les enquêtes LinuxQuestions faites avant et après la sortie de GNOME 3 ont démontré jusqu'à quel point sa popularité est descendue une fois que des gens l'ont essayé. DAns une enquête antérieur, GNOME 2 avait été le numéro un des bureaux Linux avec 45 % d'utilisation. Après sa sortie, GNOME 3 était à 19 % et était le numéro deux, derrière KDE.
Alors que Unity et, plus tard, Cinnamon, sont devenu des magnifiques alternatives, quid de l'idée de tout simplement ressusciter le bureau GNOME 2, qui a été abandonné, puisqu'il avait été si populaire. Un développeur de l'Argentine, Perberos, a décidé de faire cela. Il a pris le code de GNOME 2 et en a créé une branche, en appelant son projet MATE. Sa première sortie a eu lieu le 19 août 2011, seulement trois mois après la sortie de GNOME 3. Dès le 8 novembre 2013, MATE était disponible comme bureau de Debian et en janvier 2014, il se trouvait sur Arch Linux aussi.
All the main GNOME 2 components were forked and renamed, with most given Spanish names. The Nautilus file manager became Caja (Spanish for “box”), the Evince PDF reader became Atril (“lectern”) and the File Roller file archiver became Engrampa (“staple”). The Metacity window manager became Marco (“frame”), the gedit text editor became Pluma (“pen”) and so on.
The desktop itself was named for a South American caffeine-laden herbal tea called mate. The tea is made from the yurbe mate plant (Ilex paraguariensis). It is properly pronounced “mah-tay” and not like the English word “mate”, a term that can mean “friend”, although that actually is a good fit for this user-friendly desktop!
The project writes MATE with all capital letters, even though it is not an acronym, just to make it fit in with some of the other desktop names, like GNOME, KDE and LXDE (but not LXQt, Xfce, Unity or Cinnamon). They later devised an English recursive “backronym” to retroactively explain the use of the capital letters: “MATE Advanced Traditional Environment”.
The MATE desktop started out as a direct clone of GNOME 2, including using its three menu system (Applications, Places and System), but it has developed carefully over time. Today, it has a simple single menu that is very intuitive and easy to use and, unlike the old GNOME 2 menus, includes an application search box.
With MATE out in August, 2011, two developers, Martin Wimpress and Alan Pope, decided to put the new desktop on the Ubuntu backend and the first release of Ubuntu MATE was made on 23 October, 2014, using Ubuntu 14.10 as a base. 19 days later, on 11 November, 2014, they put out a version based on the earlier Ubuntu 14.04 LTS to provide long term support. The very next release, Ubuntu MATE 15.04, came out with official Ubuntu flavor status. Today the distribution is still led by Wimpress and Pope and it has attracted a whole community of developers to spread the workload around. Wimpress is also involved in an effort to develop an improved MATE experience, one that is closer to Ubuntu MATE for Debian.
With 20 releases over the last ten years under its belt, Ubuntu MATE is a pretty mature distribution with a dedicated base of users. It has a rather paradoxical motto, “for a retrospective future”.
It is worth recalling that for its first six years of existence, mainstream Ubuntu used the GNOME 2 desktop, from Ubuntu 4.10 to 10.10. Starting with Ubuntu 11.04, it moved to the Unity interface to avoid GNOME 3. Unity on Ubuntu lasted six years, until Ubuntu 17.04, when it was dropped in favor of the modified GNOME 3 desktop which it continues with today. In fairness, GNOME 3 has improved over time and Unity lives on as the interface for Ubuntu Unity.
Installation
It was more than a month after the official release date of 12 October, 2023, that I downloaded the 3.6 GB Ubuntu MATE 23.10 ISO file from the official website via HTTP, as the BitTorrents had been shut down. Once I had the file downloaded, I carried out an SHA256 sum check from the command line to confirm that it was an uncorrupted download.
I dropped the Ubuntu MATE 23.10 ISO file onto a USB stick, equipped with Ventoy 1.0.96, and booted it up. Ubuntu MATE is listed as officially supported by Ventoy and, as expected, it worked fine.
System requirements
The Ubuntu MATE website lists the minimum hardware as: Dual core processor 64-bit 1 GB of RAM 8 GB of disk space Display 1024 X 768 px
The recommended hardware is: Core i3 processor 64-bit 4 GB of RAM 16 GB of disk space Display 1440 X 900 px, with graphics card
Raspberry Pi B models are also supported including the Raspberry Pi 2, 3, 3+ and 4 (all memory sizes).
Ubuntu MATE is actually fairly lightweight compared to most other Ubuntu derivatives.
Trying out Ubuntu MATE
On boot up Ubuntu MATE 23.10 presents a simple desktop with two panels, one at the screen top and the other at the bottom, just like GNOME 2. The wallpaper and theme are green. It all looks very much like GNOME 2 with the exception of the menu.
The new menu is the key MATE feature, since this is where you launch applications and find the settings. The menu has categories for favorites, all applications, accessories, administration, graphics, internet, office, preferences, sound & video, system tools, universal access, and a quick link to the control center, which is where all the settings are found. The menu cannot be resized. Overall this menu system is very intuitive and will make MATE an easy transition for Windows users.
MATE is a rarity in having two panels, in an age where most desktops only have one. The bottom one can be right-clicked and deleted, but then you will have to rely on alt-tab to find minimized applications, plus lose your workspace switcher and “show desktop” button. Once closed, it can be reopened by right-clicking on the top panel and selecting “reset all panels”. Probably better to keep it.
MATE will feel very familiar to people who have used GNOME 2. For new users, its inherent simplicity and high discoverability makes it a quick study with a low learning curve. Almost anyone would feel at home here in a few minutes.
New
As a single release, Ubuntu MATE 23.10 does not bring a lot of new features, mostly just a few fixes. This is as expected, since the project was started as a reaction to too much radical change in the first place. When you reach perfection, any changes will make it worse.
In this release, the desktop is now at version 1.26.2, which includes some bug fixes and minor improvements. The rest of the listed changes are all small and mostly “behind-the-scenes” items, which users are unlikely to notice.
This release continues the recent trend of including at least one artificial intelligence-generated wallpaper. For this release, codenamed “Mantic Minotaur”, the wallpaper was generated using Stable Diffusion XL by Simon Butcher – a friend of Wimpress who is the Head of Research Platforms at Queen Mary University in London. It is a rather striking image of a Minotaur in graphic novel style. It won’t be everyone’s preference for daily use, but it is an attention-getter.
Settings
Ubuntu MATE features a default green theme and that includes the default wallpaper for 23.10, which is a simple geometric design with the MATE logo. In total, 28 wallpaper designs are provided, including the aforementioned Minotaur wallpaper, so there are lots of choices. Furthermore, 23 window color themes are included. The MATE Control Center gathers all of the settings into one convenient place and makes finding your own look an easy and enjoyable task.
For users who like a dock on their desktop, MATE has the Plank desktop dock installed by default but not turned on. It can easily be activated by opening the Plank preferences dialogue box which also includes a plethora of settings. Plank is easy to turn off, too.
Applications
Some of the applications included with Ubuntu MATE 23.10 are: Atril 1.26.0 PDF viewer* Caja 1.26.1 file manager Celluloid 0.25 video player CUPS 2.4.6 printing system Document Scanner (Simple Scan) 44.0 optical scanner* Engrampa 1.26.0 file archiver* Evolution 3.50.0 email client Eye of MATE 1.26.0 image viewer* Firefox 118.0.1 web browser GDebi 44.2 package installer GNOME Disks 45.0 disk manager Gparted 1.5.0 partition editor GUFW 22.04.0 firewall controller MATE Calculator 1.26.0 calculator* MATE Control Center 1.26.1 settings manager MATE Disk Usage Analyzer 1.26.1 (baobab) disk display MATE System Monitor 1.26.0 system resource monitor MATE Terminal 1.26.1 terminal emulator LibreOffice 7.6.2 office suite Pipewire 0.3.79 audio controller Plank 0.11.89 desktop dock* Pluma 1.26.0 text editor* Redshift 1.12 screen color temperature adjuster* Rhythmbox 3.4.7 music player Shotwell 0.32.2 photo manager Software Boutique 0+git.0fdcecc software store Transmission 4.0.2 bittorrent client Webcamoid 9.1.1 webcam
* indicates same application version as used in Ubuntu MATE 23.04 ** supplied as a snap, so version depends on the upstream package manager
Many of the default applications included are MATE forks, originally from the GNOME desktop.
MATE has its own Caja file manager in place of the standard Gnome file manager, Nautilus. Caja is a fork of Nautilus with some of Nautilus' deleted features reinstated like the “up one level” button, plus it has bulk file-renaming which is a useful feature.
The Software Boutique store is unique to the Ubuntu MATE project. It was written as an improvement on GNOME Software and Ubuntu Software. It is included as a Snap package but originates from project github sources, not from the usual Ubuntu Snap Store, snapcraft.io.
The list of default applications provided is fairly complete, but not excessive, and, unlike Ubuntu Cinnamon, no functional duplicates are included. For most desktop users, there will not be many applications to add from the repositories, perhaps just a video editor.
Conclusions
If you liked the early GNOME 2 versions of Ubuntu, you will probably love Ubuntu MATE, as it is a worthy successor and overall very similar.
If you are new to Linux, particularly coming from Windows, and looking for a very simple, menu-driven desktop that you can master in a few minutes, then Ubuntu MATE may be your ticket to a fast home in the Linux world.
If you are the sort of user who is looking for fancy effects, bling and gimmicks, then I would suggest you walk right past Ubuntu MATE, because you will be quickly bored. This is a minimalist distribution that stays out of your way and lets you get work done. It is not fancy.
The next Ubuntu MATE release will be a long term support version, 24.04 LTS, with three years of support, due out on 25 April, 2024.
External links
Official website: https://ubuntu-mate.org/