Anyone else using MATE?

English Open Chat
#1

I got bored this morning and decided to try out MATE on Leap 42.1. I’ve used UbuntuMATE extensively in the past and Gnome 2 long before that, and I guess I will always have a soft spot for it. It’s traditional, stable, low resource, fast, looks pretty good and it’s still being actively developed. What’s not to love?

I grabbed a copy of Clonezilla and backed up my current Leap/Gnome install to an image which I stored on external media, in case I wanted to painlessly go back to it. I then just pulled in the MATE packages and everything seemed to work fine… but I couldn’t completely de-Gnome my install. I expected this would be the case, so I decided to wipe the drive and reinstall from scratch (well, wipe everything but /home anyway).

Reinstalling from scratch would also give me the ability to test out a “pure” MATE install on Leap. I selected a “Minimal X Windows” install, let the installer finish, booted to it and used YaST to pull in the MATE pattern along with some additional themes and goodies. While that was going on, I moved all the hidden cruft from my original install in /home to a backup folder on the same partition. This way I knew some old config file wouldn’t give me issues, but I could still grab selected configuration files at my leisure and restore them to their proper locations.

After the MATE packages were pulled in, it was a simple matter of selecting MATE at the login prompt in LightDM the first time, and then setting things up the way I like it.

I don’t really know what I expected from MATE on OpenSUSE… but man, it’s a nice user experience and nicely integrated into the distribution. As a bonus, it simply flies on a NUC. I have had zero problems with it after a hard day of throwing everything I could at it, with not one hiccup or crash. I think I’ll keep MATE around :slight_smile:

Here are some screenshots of the finished product, using elements of the Vertex-Light theme.

Below: MATE’s Control Center, the Caja file manager and System Monitor.

http://electragician.net/linked-files/public/cc-sysmon-caja.png

Terminal, Firefox and System Monitor.

http://electragician.net/linked-files/public/term-sysmon-ff.png

All three tabs on the great little “MATE Tweak” app, along with a shot of the menus under this theme.

http://electragician.net/linked-files/public/mate-tweak-menus.png

#2

Don’t remember using anything else than KDE but this looks really nice :slight_smile: In the times of gnome 2 I couldn’t get used to the application bar being on top but I guess this can be tweaked. This gives me some incentive to try it out in case I will be reinstalling or installing some new OS.

#3

I don’t use Mate. I am pleased to see it offered as an option though. It’s a shame that kde3 was removed as one however. Hopefully the Trinity project keeps up the good work they’ve been doing for the last few years.

I’m glad you’re having luck with it man. Your desktop looks pretty sweet in the November thread. Those Faenza icons really help make Mate look awesome. Loving the dark on green too. I always liked the default three button menu more than the old one button menu OpenSUSE used to use, too. That menu was horrendous, even worse than the Gnome2 one button menu.
Is it running stable, and will it tempt you use OpenSUSE as extensively as you have for UbuntuMate?

#4

MATE is running incredibly stable. I haven’t had any instability at all, and I’ve tinkered with 1.10 on Leap, 1.12 on Leap via the MATE repo, 1.12 on Tumbleweed even tossed in the Compiz .9 series from yet another repo. All of those iterations have been just rock solid, even when adding Compiz for nice graphical effects. I don’t even recall so much as an app crash, but I’m positive I haven’t had any issues with the desktop itself.

I’m a big fan of UbuntuMATE by the way. Martin Wimpress really put his heart and soul into that distro, pulling together upstream work and adding some unique touches, and it shows. That distro has some major polish and attention to detail. I stopped using it not because I didn’t like something, but rather because I found I liked openSUSE more. Tumbleweed was what initially drew my attention.

What I like:

  1. I really like YaST. Not being a sysadmin, when I need to do something like setup samba or tweak some part of the system, YaST is supremely helpful.

  2. I also like the tools openSUSE puts out there for everyone to use, such as the Build Service. That willingness to give back and help others is a real tangible benefit.

  3. I like Tumbleweed and I like Leap, two takes on a distribution to cover all the bases.

  4. I like the fact that openSUSE doesn’t dictate to me which desktop I should run, or require me to grab a particular install disk to get Gnome or KDE, etc…

  5. I like the fact that stability doesn’t take a back seat. Even in Tumbleweed, or maybe especially in Tumbleweed :slight_smile:

I’ll be sticking with openSUSE, but I expect I’ll be swapping from desktop to desktop occasionally. Part of the fun for me with computers is seeing what’s new, or trying out some new combinations (xfce with Kwin!). I like to tinker, and openSUSE is actually the perfect playground for that sort of thing :slight_smile:

#5

I’ve got UbuntuMate on an old netbook that doens’t handle the heavier desktop environments very well (even Xfce and Lxde) but it handles Mate alright (only 1 app at a time for best results).

Comparing the 2 iterations, do you see openSUSE being lighter or heavier than UbuntuMate? It may not be very noticeable if you have a powerful machine. Once you put it on something much weaker, those small tweaks and differences become noticeable. :wink:

#6

They both run about the same on my computer.

That said, I don’t have any issues running Gnome or KDE either, so I’m not sure which of them would be better on an older or weaker machine. Sorry :frowning:

#7

I was just talking about the older machines because slight differences between Ubuntu and openSUSE versions are noticeable while on modern, more powerful systems the difference is not noticeable many of the time.

I have found that Mate runs lighter than Lxde or Xfce which runs lighter than Gnome, Unity or KDE.