How to Install MATE 1.8 complete desktop environment in OpenSUSE 13.1

[justauser7]

Hello,

After hours of looking around I don’t seem to find an easy way to install the complete MATE 1.8 DE on openSUSE 13.1. I’ve added the X11:MATE:Current repo per instructions here: https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:MATE/Install. But there doesn’t seem to be a meta package like mate-core or mate-desktop-environment that would install the core set of applications to provide a basic functional MATE desktop.

zypper install mate-desktop only installs that one package and doesn’t automatically include any core ones like like the mate window manager, control center, power manager etc…

Do I have to install every MATE package by manually selecting them in Yast > Software Management?

By the way I’m running OpenSUSE 13.1 KDE.

Thanks!

[ianlamin]

I am also installing MATE (stable -1.6) currently using this blog: http://hacklog.in/opensuse-13-1-rc1-mate-desktop-experiment/
If you want to use 13.1 repo instead of tumbleweed (as mentioned there) then use this:

sudo zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/X11:/MATE:/STABLE:/1.6/openSUSE_13.1/ "MATE 1.6 (openSUSE_13.1)"

Then

sudo zypper ref "MATE 1.6 (openSUSE_13.1)"
sudo zypper in -t pattern mate-desktop-environment

Rest, do as he described it there and post results.

[ianlamin]

and ~/.xinitrc doesn’t exist. We have to create it by ourselves. Use “sudo zypper in nano” to install nano editor as its easy. Then “sudo nano ~/.xinitrc” will let you create the file and you can write and save what he mentioned there.
I installed it successfully, it running okay, have to correct the fonts though as they are unreadble as kde.
goodluck.

[wolfi323]

@ianlamin

Then “sudo nano ~/.xinitrc” will let you create the file and you can write and save what he mentioned there.

DON’T use sudo for that!

~/.xinitrd is a user configuration file in your user’s home directory. No need to create that as root.
It should be owned by your user anyway.

And I would say, you don’t even have to create that ~/.xinitrc at all.

On openSUSE, $WINDOWMANAGER is normally set by the xdm init script.
Just setting the default windowmanager in /etc/sysconfig/windowmanager (DEFAULT_WM=“mate”) should suffice, and would affect all users.

[ianlamin]

@wolfi323

DON’T use sudo for that!

~/.xinitrd is a user configuration file in your user’s home directory. No need to create that as root.
It should be owned by your user anyway.

And I would say, you don’t even have to create that ~/.xinitrc at all.

On openSUSE, $WINDOWMANAGER is normally set by the xdm init script.
Just setting the default windowmanager in /etc/sysconfig/windowmanager (DEFAULT_WM=“mate”) should suffice, and would affect all users.

You are wrong that changing /etc/sysconfig/windowmanager gonna make it right. I tried this and it threw me in x-server mode.
Then in x minimal mode itself, I had to edit back DEFAULT_WM=“twm” and then recreate the ~/.xinitrc file, this time without sudo, like you said.

And, I have Intel HD video, mate created tearing while video playbacks. So, I had to do make a file “etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf” and write this:

Section "Device"  Identifier  "Intel Graphics"
  Driver      "intel"
  Option      "TearFree" "true"
EndSection

sources for this solution:
https://forum.manjaro.org/index.php?topic=6270.0
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Intel_Graphics#Tear-free_video

[wolfi323]

@ianlamin

You are wrong that changing /etc/sysconfig/windowmanager gonna make it right.

Well, how are you starting X then?

My /etc/init.d/xdm has this:

test -z "$DEFAULT_WM" && DEFAULT_WM=twm



if test -z "$WINDOWMANAGER" ; then
    SAVEPATH=$PATH
    PATH=$PATH:/usr/X11R6/bin:/usr/openwin/bin
    desktop=/usr/share/xsessions/${DEFAULT_WM}.desktop

    if test -s "$desktop" ; then
        while read -r line; do
            case ${line} in
            Exec=*) WINDOWMANAGER="$(command -v ${line#Exec=})"
                    break
            esac
        done < $desktop
    fi
    if test -n "$DEFAULT_WM" -a -z "$WINDOWMANAGER" ; then
        WINDOWMANAGER="$(command -v ${DEFAULT_WM##*/})"
    fi
    PATH=$SAVEPATH
    unset SAVEPATH desktop
fi
unset DEFAULT_WM
export WINDOWMANAGER

Which obviously gets the name of the session’s .desktop file (in /usr/share/xsessions/) from $DEFAULT_WM and sets $WINDOWMANAGER according to the “Exec=” line in that file.

If you do set $WINDOWMANAGER somewhere else already, this is not done of course.

If $DEFAULT_WM is undefined, it is set to “twm”, so maybe you had a typo somewhere?

I haven’t tried out Mate myself, but that’s the way how it works with any other desktop environment. And Mate does contain an /usr/share/xsessions/mate.desktop file as well. Do you have that? I think it’s included in the mate-session-manager package.

[ianlamin]

As mentioned here http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Intel_HD_Graphics and on archwiki page also that “tearfree” may have power consuming effect, so I added following parameters in GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT in file /etc/default/grub:

i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 i915.semaphores=1 pcie_aspm=force

and then did:

grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

[justauser7]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the responses. But I was looking for a package for version 1.8 not 1.6. And looks like 1.8 does not have a meta package like mate-desktop-environment as of now in OpenSUSE 13.1.

I will start with a minimal X windows install and pull in packages. The problem is its easy (as has happened to me before) to skip some required packages which are core for a functional desktop and I’ve ended up with a broken desktop with no clue as to what ones I may have missed. But I will try and maybe post my results soon if I can get it working.

Meanwhile if someone has already had success starting with a minimal system and building it up from there, please do post your experience/instructions.

Cheers!

[wolfi323]

@ianlamin:
FYI, I did install MATE 1.6 now.
And after setting DEFAULT_WM=“mate” in /etc/sysconfig/windowmanager it did start fine here, without an ~/.xinitrc, even when using xdm.

OTOH, lightdm allows you to select the session you want to login to, just like kdm and gdm, so there’s actually no need to either change /etc/sysconfig/windowmanager nor create ~/.xinitrc. Just choose MATE on the login screen…

@justauser7

Thanks for the responses. But I was looking for a package for version 1.8 not 1.6. And looks like 1.8 does not have a meta package like mate-desktop-environment as of now in OpenSUSE 13.1.

You’re right, sorry for being off-topic.
TBH, I didn’t notice the different version numbers at first when I replied.

Unfortunately you are right, there is no pattern available for X11:Mate:Current.
You could use YaST’s repo view to select the packages.

The critical packages seem to be those:
mate-window-manager, mate-session-manager, mate-settings-daemon, mate-desktop, mate-panel, mate-notification-daemon, mate-keyring, mate-icon-theme, mate-dialogs, mate-control-center, mate-backgrounds
Those are installed by the mate-core pattern.

mate-desktop-environment contains those in addition:
mate-document-viewer, mate-file-archiver, mate-text-editor, mate-image-viewer, mate-power-manager, mate-screensaver, mate-calc, mate-utils, mate-applets, mate-character-map, mate-media, mate-terminal, mate-theme, mate-system-monitor, mate-indicator-applet, mate-menus.
Most of those are not really necessary to start/use Mate though.

You could of course also install 1.6 with the pattern, then change the repo URL (or remove 1.6 and add Current), and then do a “zypper dup --from X11:MATE:Current” (or whatever you named the repo).

[wolfi323]

@wolfi323

You could of course also install 1.6 with the pattern, then change the repo URL (or remove 1.6 and add Current), and then do a “zypper dup --from X11:MATE:Current” (or whatever you named the repo).

FYI, I tried that now.
I installed Mate 1.6 using the pattern earlier (exactly like written in http://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/497962-How-to-Install-MATE-1-8-complete-desktop-environment-in-OpenSUSE-13-1?p=2642638#post2642638), and now I just changed the repo URL, selected the repo in YaST and clicked on “Switch all system packages to the versions in this repository” (i.e. the same as “zypper dup --from X11:MATE:Current”).

I had to solve a few conflicts, because some things got renamed, the old versions had to be uninstalled.
Those things were missing of course, but I got a functional desktop.

The things that got uninstalled without replacement were those:
mate-file-manager (now named “caja”), mate-image-viewer (now “eom”), mate-document-viewer (“atril”)
So you might want to install them manually afterwards.

But as I said, those are not really critical, MATE itself worked and was useable, so it’s no problem to install them afterwards.

If you really want to have everything that MATE (and the repo) includes, then you don’t have a need for a pattern anyway.
Just use YaST’s repository view to see all packages from that repo and then just install all of them (right-click on the package list and select “All in this list”->“Install” or call the same function in the “Packages” menu)…

Of course I did not start with a minimal installation, but I think this would work the same, because the MATE pattern (or installing everything from the MATE repo) should take care of the necessary stuff.

One note though: I suppose the minimal install uses xdm as login manager, but this does not allow to choose the desktop session.
So you either should install and use a different login manager like lightdm, or set MATE as the default session in /etc/sysconfig/windowmanager, as written earlier.

Again, there’s no need for a ~/.xinitrc to start MATE, and I would not recommend it.

[justauser7]

@wolfi323

But as I said, those are not really critical, MATE itself worked and was useable, so it’s no problem to install them afterwards.

If you really want to have everything that MATE (and the repo) includes, then you don’t have a need for a pattern anyway.
Just use YaST’s repository view to see all packages from that repo and then just install all of them (right-click on the package list and select “All in this list”->“Install” or call the same function in the “Packages” menu)…

Of course I did not start with a minimal installation, but I think this would work the same, because the MATE pattern (or installing everything from the MATE repo) should take care of the necessary stuff.

One note though: I suppose the minimal install uses xdm as login manager, but this does not allow to choose the desktop session.
So you either should install and use a different login manager like lightdm, or set MATE as the default session in /etc/sysconfig/windowmanager, as written earlier.

Again, there’s no need for a ~/.xinitrc to start MATE, and I would not recommend it.

Wolfi323,

I started with a minimal X-windows install. And then did the following:

zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/X11:/MATE:/Current/openSUSE_13.1/X11:MATE:Current.repo
zypper refresh
zypper update

Installed using YaST most of the packages in that repo that made obvious sense that it was required for a basic functional desktop.
Installed lightdm, changed the default DM to it.

Now I can log into to MATE by choosing it on the login screen.

I though I was having a field day once the MATE desktop loaded with icons on the desktop and all that, but… I noticed there is no main taskbar/panel with the main application menu.

Any ideas how do I make that appear?

I have installed mate-panel, mate-menus, mate-indicator-applet and similar such packages I thought had to do with the main application panel.

The only way I can launch stuff is Alt + F2 and minimizing open windows docks them to the lower right corner outside the screen area! I can only access them again by Alt + TABbin through them.

[ianlamin]

@justauser7

Wolfi323,
I though I was having a field day once the MATE desktop loaded with icons on the desktop and all that, but… I noticed there is no main taskbar/panel with the main application menu.

Any ideas how do I make that appear?

“field day once” means you know about the packages of Mate only from a user pow, so you shouldn’t have manually selected the packages.
wolfi323 stated two methods to install 1.8 version, you can look into those:

1. I installed Mate 1.6 using the pattern earlier (exactly like written in http://forums.opensuse.org/showthrea...38#post2642638), and now I just changed the repo URL, selected the repo in YaST and clicked on “Switch all system packages to the versions in this repository” (i.e. the same as “zypper dup --from X11:MATE:Current”).
2. If you really want to have everything that MATE (and the repo) includes, then you don’t have a need for a pattern anyway.
   Just use YaST’s repository view to see all packages from that repo and then just install all of them (right-click on the package list and select “All in this list”->“Install” or call the same function in the “Packages” menu)…

and you can also use this option to installl not only what he recommened but also all the rest, as you never know which might be needed:

3. The critical packages seem to be those:
   mate-window-manager, mate-session-manager, mate-settings-daemon, mate-desktop, mate-panel, mate-notification-daemon, mate-keyring, mate-icon-theme, mate-dialogs, mate-control-center, mate-backgrounds
   Those are installed by the mate-core pattern.

mate-desktop-environment contains those in addition:
mate-document-viewer, mate-file-archiver, mate-text-editor, mate-image-viewer, mate-power-manager, mate-screensaver, mate-calc, mate-utils, mate-applets, mate-character-map, mate-media, mate-terminal, mate-theme, mate-system-monitor, mate-indicator-applet, mate-menus.
Most of those are not really necessary to start/use Mate though.

I am a noob, these are just options, choose or find you own way.
Goodluck.

[ianlamin]

I am using KDE now and want to use MATE with it.
If I install core apps of mate, would it work? Like bluetooth applet, network monitor, etc. of kde will work on mate?

yesterday I installed and updated mate but mate’s bluetooth app couldn’t find my bluetooth device. Oth kde works seemlessly with it.
I guess, I would have to install lightdm to choose between the two of them.

[ianlamin]

@ianlamin

yesterday I installed and updated mate but mate’s bluetooth app couldn’t find my bluetooth device. Oth kde works seemlessly with it.

that time mate was installed solo and its bluetooth wasn’t working at all.

[justauser7]

So here is what I have so far:

Basically there are 3 ways I went about doing this:

1. Start with Minimal install with X windows and install MATE 1.8 packages manually (individually) by adding the relevant repo. To ensure you get a fully working desktop, this method will probably require you to install all the pac1ages in the repo as installing only a subset of them based on guesswork may not give you a fully functional desktop (https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/497962-How-to-Install-MATE-1-8-complete-desktop-environment-in-OpenSUSE-13-1?p=2642840#post2642840) It is possible however by trial and error to arrive at the least minumum required I’m sure.

2. Start from Minimal install with X windows and install MATE 1.6 by adding the relevant repo. Then install mate-desktop-environment. (steps are same as http://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/497962-How-to-Install-MATE-1-8-complete-desktop-environment-in-OpenSUSE-13-1?p=2642638#post2642638). After doing this change, as suggested by wolfi323 (https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/497962-How-to-Install-MATE-1-8-complete-desktop-environment-in-OpenSUSE-13-1?p=2642830#post2642830) the 1.6 MATE repo URL to current i.e. 1.8 and switch already installed packages on the system to the new repo. This ensures you end up with the 1.8 versions of only the required packages unlike method 1.

3. Start with a full install of OpenSUSE (KDE/XFCE etc.) and then basically do what is done in method #2. I tried this on the KDE installation I had and after a reboot I never saw the login screen again. I haven’t investigated what may have gone wrong having both MATE and KDE together and especially doing the package switching going from MATE 1.6 to 1.8 repository. So proceed with caution when doing this is all I can say now.

Method #2 IMO is probably the best (and cleaner) approach as you end up only with what is exactly required. (If something’s broken I’ll post here) but most importantly that is the only method that has for now given me a seemingly funcitonal MATE desktop with the basic things working as expected.

Thanks Guys!

Now I’ll play around more with what method #2 has given me and tweak the installation further to get more things in order like audio, HDMI, getting 5.1 surround sound to work with the HDMI audio out, dual displays etc. At first glance these things seem to just be working fine already

[wolfi323]

@justauser7

I though I was having a field day once the MATE desktop loaded with icons on the desktop and all that, but… I noticed there is no main taskbar/panel with the main application menu.

Any ideas how do I make that appear?

I have installed mate-panel, mate-menus, mate-indicator-applet and similar such packages I thought had to do with the main application panel.

Hm. Hard to tell now.
You could have tried to run “mate-panel” manually (in a terminal) to see if it starts or crashes.

Maybe you missed the gnome-panel-branding package (this contains the panel layout), but this is actually required by mate-panel via RPM dependencies, so should be installed automatically.

@ianlamin

I am using KDE now and want to use MATE with it.
If I install core apps of mate, would it work? Like bluetooth applet, network monitor, etc. of kde will work on mate?

MATE applications should work just fine on KDE.
The network applet (which is nm-applet AFAIK) can be used even in parallel (at the same time) with KDE’s networkmanaging applet.
With network monitor you mean the one in MATE system monitor I suppose? Yes that should work as well.

yesterday I installed and updated mate but mate’s bluetooth app couldn’t find my bluetooth device. Oth kde works seemlessly with it.
I guess, I would have to install lightdm to choose between the two of them.

If you have KDE installed, you should be using kdm anyway, right?
You can choose the desktop session in kdm as well, click on the “wrench” symbol.

Btw, your ~/.xinitrc method would make that session chooser ineffective…

@ianlamin

that time mate was installed solo and its bluetooth wasn’t working at all.

Might be related to the fact that GNOME3 forced bluez5 on us in 13.1, which broke bluetooth in all other desktops?
(there is preliminary support in KDE, but this still isn’t finished, I’m not sure how the situation is in MATE and can’t check since I don’t have a bluetooth adapter)
You might use gnome-bluetooth, but that will drag in some GNOME3/GTK3 stuff as well.

See also this mailinglist thread: http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2014-03/msg00273.html

@justauser7

3. Start with a full install of OpenSUSE (KDE/XFCE etc.) and then basically do what is done in method #2. I tried this on the KDE installation I had and after a reboot I never saw the login screen again. I haven’t investigated what may have gone wrong having both MATE and KDE together and especially doing the package switching going from MATE 1.6 to 1.8 repository. So proceed with caution when doing this is all I can say now

I did exactly this on my system. No problem with the login screen. kdm, xdm, and lightdm worked fine (and KDE and MATE of course ).
Maybe you made a mistake when editing /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager? Or you forgot to install the display manager you set?

When 13.1 was released there was a bug in lightdm that would cause it to crash on boot sometimes. Maybe you hit this?
But this should have been fixed in the meantime by an update in the update repo.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=846832

[ianlamin]

I installed Mate and now using both kde and mate, mate mostly. Haven’t installed lightdm yet as everything seems okay, maybe later.
I have to admit that as openSUSE doesn’t offer mate in shipment, so even after doing full patern mate-desktop-environment somethings may miss out which causes various issues. So, as I had kde preinstalled and update, it has all the neccessary libraries which made mate look great after installation. Ktorrent, peerguardian, video playback, etc. all seem to work nicely.
Here are some pics: http://imgur.com/a/dDr2J
the magnet links in chromium is not linked to ktorrent, although they are doing in kde with ktorrent. The linker (xdgm i guess) should be edited, if anyone knows how to then you can tell here, otherwise am also looking at places for solution.
I have installed stable 1.6 version and it will get auto updated when opensuse inclds 1.8 in stable version, I guess.
Thanks for helping guys.

[wolfi323]

@ianlamin

the magnet links in chromium is not linked to ktorrent, although they are doing in kde with ktorrent. The linker (xdgm i guess) should be edited, if anyone knows how to then you can tell here, otherwise am also looking at places for solution.

Linker? You mean the file associations, right?
No idea where you can do that in MATE, but I guess it would be in the control center.

I have installed stable 1.6 version and it will get auto updated when opensuse inclds 1.8 in stable version, I guess.

I don’t think so. https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:MATE/Install states:

The openSUSE MATE team is proud to announce the availability of MATE 1.8 for openSUSE.
The patterns are not available anymore, and won’t be in the future because of official inclusion of MATE in openSUSE.
We cannot support openSUSE 12.2 anymore, MATE requirements are not provided in the right versions in that one.
We have changed our schema of repositories, to avoid people having to change their repositories for each update. Now there is just one place, X11:MATE:Current .To install it, please replace or add our repository [check how to add the repository].

I read that as “new versions will only appear in X11:MATE:Current”. It wouldn’t make sense to put MATE 1.8 in the X11:MATE:STABLE:1.6 repo anyway.

Or do you mean you will get the update when openSUSE itself contains MATE?
Of course, when doing a distribution upgrade, you will get the packages included in openSUSE. But you should remove that repo before upgrading, as there may be conflicts.
Factory has MATE 1.8 already, so I guess it’s ok to assume it will be part of the standard openSUSE 13.2 distribution.

[justauser7]

@wolfi323

Hm. Hard to tell now.
You could have tried to run “mate-panel” manually (in a terminal) to see if it starts or crashes.

Maybe you missed the gnome-panel-branding package (this contains the panel layout), but this is actually required by mate-panel via RPM dependencies, so should be installed automatically.

I reproduced the same method on a VM and got the exact same desktop with no panel. Running mate-panel in terminal gives:

user7@vm02lp:~> mate-panel
Cannot register the panel shell: there is already one running.

I could go ahead and just install every single package in the MATE repo and maybe everything will work, but I will never know which packages are the ones that are the required ones nor is this an elegant solution.

By the way there is no "gnome-panel-branding’ package. But there was a mate-panel-branding-openSUSE which was automatically installed as part of dependencies.

Anything else I should try?

@wolfi323

I did exactly this on my system. No problem with the login screen. kdm, xdm, and lightdm worked fine (and KDE and MATE of course ).
Maybe you made a mistake when editing /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager? Or you forgot to install the display manager you set?

When 13.1 was released there was a bug in lightdm that would cause it to crash on boot sometimes. Maybe you hit this?
But this should have been fixed in the meantime by an update in the update repo.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=846832

I rebooted twice and got back into KDE. (noticed lightdm was taking a while to show the login screen). I noticed I had inadvertently 2 repos added for MATE. I think this may have messed things up when I did the whole repo switch on top of this. Anyway I will do the VM experiment on this later and have no reason to believe it will fail again.

[wolfi323]

@justauser7

I reproduced the same method on a VM and got the exact same desktop with no panel. Running mate-panel in terminal gives:

user7@vm02lp:~> mate-panel
Cannot register the panel shell: there is already one running.

So it was running, but just didn’t show anything. It could have been crashing on startup because of some missing/mismatched library or something (would have made it easier to find out which package is missing ).

I could go ahead and just install every single package in the MATE repo and maybe everything will work, but I will never know which packages are the ones that are the required ones nor is this an elegant solution.

Well, you could add them one at a time, then logout/login and see whether the panel is there. But that may take a long time of course.
What packages did you actually install to reproduce this issue? The ones from my list earlier? (I took that from the patterns, could be that I missed one or two packages)

Maybe I’ll try to investigate myself.

By the way there is no "gnome-panel-branding’ package. But there was a mate-panel-branding-openSUSE which was automatically installed as part of dependencies.

Yes. That’s what I meant.
There’s mate-panel-branding-openSUSE and mate-panel-branding-upstream. One of them should get installed automatically because mate-panel requires a “mate-panel-branding” which both of those packages provide (that’s why you can only install one of them, they conflict).