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MATE To Make It Into Debian Repositories
sfcrazy writes "Fans of the MATE desktop environment, which is a fork of Gnome 2, will be happy to know that MATE is scheduled to be included in the official Debian repositories. Early 2012, it was requested that MATE be included in said repositories, and almost 2 years later, it appears we're almost there."
Ubuntu is hardly a successor to Debian. It's more of a hanger on. Debian will be around long after Canonical goes bankrupt.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
We don't hate ubuntu for being mainstream, unless you mean mainstream like Lady Gaga is mainstream. I wouldn't invite ubuntu home to meet the folks these days (I did once when ubuntu and I were younger).
Mate
How many times will they check MATE before it's done?
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
As long as it's the Jim Carrey version on YouTube then yes.
Quit being such a pawn.
MATE is definitely not "mainstream". The mainstream follows hot trends, like the tablet-ification and dumbing-down of desktop GUIs. MATE is the opposite of this. MATE is an admission that the desktop metaphor was already perfected 10 or 15 years ago, and that what we really need is a stable, polished, feature-complete implementation of it. Cinnamon and XFCE are in the same camp, with cinnamon opting to use newer technology to achieve a similar result.
MATE going into the debian repository is a great thing. It gives credit to the notion that certain design concepts and certain software, although "dated", is so practical, sensible, and useful that it's worth keeping around for years to come.
More the bowdlerized version.
Best wishes,
Bob
"The backlash against Debian isn't that it's too mainstream. It's that they're making decisions that compromise privacy (Amazon search integrated into desktop search by default) and usability (Unity). Also, the plan to develop Mir instead of using Wayland as the replacement for X was a bit of "What are you doing Ubuntu? Ubuntu? Stahp." moment."
The backlash against Ubuntu isn't that it's too mainstream. It's that they're making decisions that compromise privacy (Amazon search integrated into desktop search by default) and usability (Unity). Also, the plan to develop Mir instead of using Wayland as the replacement for X was a bit of "What are you doing Ubuntu? Ubuntu? Stop." moment.
Fixed that for you.
I think you mean Ubuntu, because Debian isn't doing that.
The backlash against Debian isn't that it's too mainstream. It's that they're making decisions that compromise privacy (Amazon search integrated into desktop search by default) and usability (Unity).
I think you may have may have had a little brain fart there.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
A problem with Linux in general is there is simply too much choice and no apparent standardization. Ubuntu has gone off to create its own standard, and the one the world outside of open source software will see as the defacto Linux desktop. This is good and bad. Linux has crap adoption outside of open source circles precisely because there is no (seemingly) standardized desktop for business. Yes, we all know of the stories of some Brazilian, German, and Spanish government entities who have successfully switched over to Linux. This is rare and will continue to be rare unless there is a perceived stable, standardizzed desktop offering. Like or not, Canonical and Ubuntu offer this standard, and there is nothing wrong with it.
I'm not a open source greybeard position stickler who thinks everything has to be done based on decrees from the people who are as far away from the real world pragmatism as possible. Ubuntu does what it was intended to do: make Linux approachable and easy to adopt by about anyone.
Well played Sir, well played!
^ this
You may check multiple times, but you only check MATE once.
MATE is fantastic for those of us who liked GNOME 2 and want to continue using it and receiving updates for it. They're not including it by default from what I can tell, they're just making it an option to install in the repos. I'm pretty happy about this, I'll definitely be using it.
"mongo only pawn, in game of life"
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Mate
First Post Debian Edition!
The original article seems to be Slashdotted (hey, can we still do that?!), but from the MATE blog:
http://mate-desktop.org/blog/2013-11-08-debian-mate-packaging-team/
"The MATE Team is very happy to say hello to the new Debian MATE Packaging Team, that is working hard to get MATE included into the next release of Debian...First packages are already in the repositories and there are many others in ftp-master NEW queue."
which links to:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=708385#31
"The plan is to provide MATE inside the Debian archive before the end of the year (if the FTP master time will find enough time to review our uploads)."
Of course if you don't mind using the upstream repository, you can install it right now:
http://wiki.mate-desktop.org/download
I'm usually not too fussy about the desktop, but when I upgraded a Ubuntu release I found it very difficult to work under Gnome3.
Maybe it's just my own shortcomings, but I had to stop doing my actual work for a while to look for something better.
Xfce was OK, but I finally settled on mate running on Debian wheezy. It's been stable for me with no issues.
Give it a try if you're looking for a "traditional" desktop on Linux.
That's going a little bit far to say it was perfected 10-15 years ago. I'd assert that it is more a recognition that the attempts to go beyond what we had 10-15 years ago have taken us in the wrong direction.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
I would have said the vajazzled version.
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
Early 2012, it was requested that MATE be included in said repositories, and almost 2 years later, it appears we're almost there.
2 years, or "an afternoon discussion" in Debian time.
Some settling may occur during posting.
Clearly you haven't seen a black woman dressed for church.
Firefox, probably not. ICEWeasel, absolutely possible.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
So I won?
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
what the fuck are you talking about. Ubuntu is not a successor by any means, it sits firmly downstream.
If debian where to go away tommorow, Ubuntu would go away in 6 months, because they still pull packages from debian to make their new versions.
Also, debian runs on a wide variety of hardware Ubuntu won't run on, in fact one of the widest variety and its a better general purpose OS.
Also, Debian has the lead market share in the server world, so I'd love for you to tell all the companies who run debian-stable servers they need to ditch them for ubuntu-server.
http://w3techs.com/blog/entry/debian_is_now_the_most_popular_linux_distribution_on_web_servers
I think you've lost track of reality. You don't even know what a hipster is.
bullshit. Mainstream is a relivant term. What is mainstream to one, might be obscure to another.
In the Linux world, there were traditionally four "mainstream" desktops
Gnome, KDE, XFCE, and LXDE.
MATE and Cinnamon both have a sizable following and intrest. Its not like we are talking about icewm, or some obsecure window manager here.
could you at least bold the change so I don't have to run a fucking diff on it?
Thankyou. I wondered what that word meant. I googled it. I am now getting some quite odd search suggestions and advertisments.
You are mistaken. XFCE (although I use it myself) has certainly never been mainstream, and LXDE (are you kidding?) has never even been on the radar. Here in the linux world, although there are many GUIs to choose from, gnome and KDE are the only two that have ever remotely qualified as "mainstream" (and maybe FVWM if you want to go way back). This is coming from someone who has used linux almost exclusively since '97, and has seen the entire evolution with his own eyes.
Fact is, people loved the doo-doo brown wallpaper.
There were some complaints about it. It wasn't a terrible color, it just wasn't the best. Most people wanted Ubuntu to adopt a more conventional color scheme, like the usual generic blue that window managers tend to default to. However, Ubuntu insisted on being different. I guess the designers don't feel creative enough if they choose some color which simply has one of the RGB triplet maximized and the other two minimized. Nevermind the fact that, for whatever reasons, such simple colors are the most attractive when you have to look at them every day.
Personally, I didn't think the brown was that bad, and so I was quite disappointed to see it replaced with that ... fuck, I don't even know what to call it. It wasn't a color, it was just awful. Thankfully Linux Mint fixed it by taking the obvious approach of replacing it with a simple primary color, which is all anybody ever wanted.
Hey I'm still on FVWM you insensitive clod!
The "metaphor" was perfected 10-15 years ago, not the implementation. The actual implementation, IMO, was never actually perfected (as in "perfect"), but gnome 2 and kde 3 came the closest, before they both went off the deep end (when they were taken over by younger, more "visionary" maintainers). MATE is a blessing in that they strive to preseve the accomplishments of gnome 2, rather than tossing them out with the garbage (as the gnome 3 developers did). Cinnamon is a blessing in that they are following a similar parth, but using the latest technology. There is a project similar to cinnamon that uses the latest QT, but I forget the name. The bottom line is that it's great that we have these choices.
If you want a quick-to-adapt distro, try Ubuntu. It was so quick to adapt that it quickly adapted a whole new desktop environment as default overnight once during a routine system update.
Mark said Debian is part of Ubuntu ecosystem.
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1072#comment-394295
Thankyou. I wondered what that word meant. I googled it. I am now getting some quite odd search suggestions and advertisments.
I know, ever since I googled "Debian" I've been getting more and more ads for Finnish singles dating sites.
Guys, guys, stop arguing - can't we get along?
Let's call Ubuntu the v******ed version of linux?
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
The basic Unix approach is almost universal, both Linux and Windows using a bash command line, and just about everything but Windows being built on a Unix style base. That approach has stood the test of time in the face of new bright ideas. Likewise, I would say Windows 2000 prior to the XP bubblegum theme was pretty much the desktop+start button approach done right. The 2D array of icons of iOS and Android will, I imagine again be seen as a long term successful design. The problem is that big business is desperate to find the 'next big thing' to try to monopolise and own it to maximise their bottom line.
Abandoning old ideas as 'dated' is a mark of the 'planned obselescence' business model that much of modern industry has adopted: effectively moving from the 'buy stuff' model to the 'rent stuff and surrender control' model, that is good for business, bad for consumers, but easy to force if government regulation doesn't stop this market degeneracy.
John_Chalisque
I think we have different definitions of "perfect". The metaphor will always have room to evolve for the positive, even if people keep failing to actually make it happen.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
I wonder if anybody's done a python wm that you control through the scripting language? Or a forth wm?
John_Chalisque
Personally, I consider a good pager the most important part of the desktop, and there already was a good pager in the days of fvwm, so mostly yes, the desktop has been perfect for a looooong time. One day the mainstream will finally discover the pager and all will be well.
Wow, I wonder who in Debian they blew to get something new accepted in only 2yr.
It's a little more complex than that.
It's true that there is an automatic flow of packages from debian to ubuntu and no automatic flow in the opposite direction but it is also true that a lot of the more radical stuff (multiarch, "modern" init system) happens in ubuntu first because it takes debian so long to argue about the details. It's also true that a fair number of core packages in debian are maintained by canonical employees.
I think ubuntu would certainly be seriously weakened without debian and would likely have to either kick out a large part of universe or accept that it would remain unmaintained but I doubt the dissapearance of debian (not that it's likely to happen) would make them "go away in 6 months".
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
This is good news. GNOME2/MATE is a very nicely evolved traditional desktop, that I am sure has more person hours of testing than all the other linux desktops put together (being the default in most major distros for years).
Having it in the official repos, saves having to hunt down the addresses of the repos when installing. A strength of debian is how broad the repos are. Thanks for the hard work folks.
I have been used gnome2 for years, and now I'm testing gnome3 and I don't like it very much. Its too smartfone, I don't know... I will try MATE when it came to Debian.
The pager in fvwm was not only great but is still great. Fvwm is still under active development and is continuously updated to take advantage of modern technology.
Ubuntu is a PR machine.
"We'll be converting to foo, we'll be rolling our own bar".
And where does it, on its web pages, say Ubuntu runs Linux?
For all we care (we don't), they might as well run an MS kernel.
And I don't mean MS as in M. Shuttleworth.
could you at least bold the change so I don't have to run a fucking diff on it?
Friend, if you need diff for two paragraphs, please work on your reading comprehension skills.
ad tabletification: I'm running mate with debian testing for over a year now - on a tablet (yes a real one with i5 and wacom multitouch), compared with gnome I have to say it's so much better for tablets, the fancy gnome overlays might look shiny, but since touch gestures have only started to work recently, the idea of getting to all the programs without a bloated dock wasn't (and still isn't) feasable without an additional mouse, which makes the touch kinda pointless. and since most configs have disappeared in these new gui-desktop environments, chance of getting a gnome/unity based linux running on tablets without the need for additional input devices is slim to none. gnome/unity isn't for tablets, it's made for people dumb enough, that you don't want them to have contol of their devices - which then brings me to the question why the frack on a linux at all? if you do not give them the possibility to configure the device with gui tools, they only have the terminal - which is fine by me, but is it really sensible to have a dumb person poking around in /etc e.g.? leave them to windows 8
I'm looking really forward to this change - maybe updating will not break so much in the future anymore... and might make debian with mate a good alternative for businesses needing a replacement for windows 7
Yes, it's true. Debian is part of Ubuntu's ecosystem. Just like oxygen is part of my ecosystem. If I don't get adequate oxygen, I'll die. If Ubuntu doesn't get adequate Debian, then Ubuntu will die. The revers is not true, of course. If oxygen doesn't get any of me, oxygen won't die - nor will Debian die for lack of Ubuntu.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
It take its time, but at least, I wonder why debian doubt so long?
The actual implementation, IMO, was never actually perfected (as in "perfect"), but gnome 2 and kde 3 came the closest, before they both went off the deep end (when they were taken over by younger, more "visionary" maintainers).
What the heck are you talking about? KDE4 is no different from KDE3 as far as the metaphor that it tries to implement, except that it adds some extra (optional) features such as "Activities" and indexing. KDE4 uses a totally different codebase, yes, but it still works pretty much the same as KDE3 as far as the UI goes. You can criticize KDE4 all you want for their botched execution and roll-out of the early releases (they were feature-incomplete for a while, and very buggy, but that was years ago), but there's nothing substantially different about the UI as compared to older KDE releases, unlike Gnome3.
You've got me confused. Is there a new world order or something? When did Windows adopt bash? It's true, I can't even begin to imagine using Windows without Cygwin, but Cygwin is not Windows.
Agree 100% with everything else.
I'm not too worked up over KDE4's bloat given the cheapness of RAM and disk space, but KDE4 lacks one simple thing. There should be a single simple option for the user to set: "Give me KDE3 look and feel all the way, but with the KDE4/Qt4 improved codebase plus the obvious underpinning improvements". I.e., it would get rid of the compositing stuff, Plasma stuff, animation stuff - a plain desktop as folder, plus panels. Basically a quick, simply way to disable all the stuff which is utterly pointless to the task at hand, and in fact gets in the way, at least for some major subset of users.
It is really quite a daunting undertaking to identify and properly manipulate all the distributed settings necessary to accomplish this choice. The capability is there; it's just too hard to accomplish the way it is now. I love the detailed configurability, but there needs to be at least one meta-configuration setting. It's not like it would be hard to code or confuse anybody.
That should pretty much satisfy everybody beyond a few religious adherents to hardware/software minimalism.
KDE4 has finally evolved into something not terrible. But it's not even approximately as good as was KDE3. It it were, I'd be using it. (I tried for a few months recently. It was OK, but inferior to Mate, where I rated KDE3 as superior to Gnome2.) Currently I'm using xfce, which is pretty good, but not quite as good (for my purposes) as was Gnome2, which, as I stated, was inferior to KDE3. It's been several months since I tried Cinnamon, but the screen shots I see don't appear to be as good as Mate.
It's also been over a year since I tried LXDE. It might have improved. When I tried it I rated it as better than either Gnome3 or KDE4, but then KDE4 improved (and, in any case, it was inferior to xfce).
OTOH, my wife always asks me "Where's electricsheep?". Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get it working on ANYTHING recently. (I did have it working on KDE4, which is a part of the reason I stuck to it for months.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Like qtile?
You'd have to like using tiling wms though.
Don't know about forth, but Xmonad uses haskell. Yet again, you'd need to like using tiling wms though :)
I.e., it would get rid of the compositing stuff, Plasma stuff, animation stuff - a plain desktop as folder, plus panels
Removing compositing would make it slower on most systems, since you'd have to do everything on the CPU instead of offloading it to the GPU. You can already disable animation and other stuff pretty easily. But you're right, they could use a few buttons to select certain feature sets (one for minimalist desktop, one for everything-and-the-kitchen-sink, one for Windows XP/7-like UI, one for MacOS-like UI, etc.). I'd suggest submitting a feature request.
What's the case with Linux Mint? Wikipedia says that it's based on Ubuntu or Debian. I guess that means you can pile the Mint stuff on top of either.
Just because something stood the test of time doesn't mean it was the best approach, only that it was good enough.
Mint have umpteen versions just to bewilder the Linux curious newbe they are aiming to attract. All are based on Ubuntu and are are buggy as Ubuntu. One version of Mint is based on Debian Testing so its slightly less buggy than the others but still not as solid as Debian Testing itself.
Now that Gnome 2 is no more, there is chance that MATE and/or XFCE get mainstream audience. The today decision is a step in that direction.
DEBIAN FOR MENTAL FREAKS!
Linux Mint is Ubuntu based, and I don't use it. Linux Mint Debian Edition is - naturally enough - Debian based, and I use it. It's sweet. And, no, you can't mix the two. Adding a Ubuntu repository to your LMDE installation may work for awhile, but it's going to wreak havoc on your software manager eventually.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
So what's so hard about having to do it in 4-5 clicks total?
Click activities, click the one that says something like "Desktop with icons" activity[*]
right click "K" menu, click "use old style menus"
click "K" menu > settings > system settings click the either desktop or appearance icon ( I forget which the compositing stuff is under ).
??????
Done, AKA profit.
[*] at least for 4.10.x there is a desktop w/ icons activity, not sure when that one was introduced.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
I think XFCE is somewhat mainstream, i.e. you had Xubuntu 7.04, debian ISO with XFCE etc., maybe it was hardly a common desktop or default desktop but the best known after KDE and Gnome. (not counting FVWM, twm, *box etc. as desktop)
LXDE though is quite a recent desktop in comparison.
It was a sad day when I realized that upon doing a new install of a distro, my distros started including certain window managers as "default". Thank you Slackware for not falling into this kind of douchebaggery.
"Debian will be around long after Canonical goes bankrupt."
you mean pumped and dumped by MS.
It's good to see a major distribution acknowledging the efforts of the MATE team. Hopefully other distributions will follow (Arch Linux, I'm looking at you)
multi-arch is done by debian, and debian supports a far far far wider range of platforms than ubuntu. There is also consistancy throughout the various platforms, unlike ubuntu, where things other than x86 don't even show up in the package tracker.
I am also pretty sure that Ubuntu takes most of its build's from debian-unstable, then tries and tweak them.
As far as init systems got, Ubuntu is the only one using upstart, and most likely will stay that way. Everyone else is going to red-hat developed systemd, to include debian.
If debian went away, ubuntu would most likely be based on redhat or slackware.
Debian is one of the giant trunks of the GNU/Linux community, with RedHat being the other. Ubuntu depends on debian.
Recent advertising decisions by Ubuntu asside, there is nothing wrong with taking something like debian, and putting some polish on it, and making it a easy to use consumer desktop. Debian wasn't doing this, and someone really needed to. Nothing wrong with the general concept of Ubuntu, but its dishonest to say Debian is either less important, or less relivant.
1. Learn what hyperbole is
2. Learn what comprehension means.
Trying to find a change of two characters out of about 350 characters is just a pain in the ass. If you really think I used diff, you're the idiot here.
I would argue that LXDE has become mainstream over the course of the past year or so. "Traditionally mainstream" is GNOME and KDE, with xfce as the ross perot of linux (except nobody cares about getting a flat plurality). But moving beyond the traditional, "mainstream" may reasonably refer to more options, especially with growing dissatisfaction with GNOME and KDE over the course of the past 3-5 years, such that -- for *that time window*, it may be reasonable to point out the increasing and significant market share of xfce, LXDE, MATE, and cinnamon.
It makes little difference to me whether its in the repos or not. It's not like it was hard to get MATE working with debian. 2 years ago I added one line to /etc/apt/sources, ran #apt-get mate-desktop, restarted the machine, and it worked.
Sure, that's cool and all that it'll be in the official repos and require 20 seconds less effort to switch to pretty soon. But you pointing out that debian is an unacceptable desktop solution is nonsense. More precisely, it isn't for everyone, specifically people (perhaps such as yourself?) that wish for their system to be exactly as they want it and have no time for messing with backports. But this does not change that installing software such as MATE or iceweasel-current on debian stable is not tremendously challenging.
Actually, I think the peak for Ubuntu and Gnome 2 was 10.04 LTS. It was a sad day when that expired. OBTW: I'm now happily churning the LTS version of Mint Mate. Happy days, I can still get some work done...
Dear Microlimp: I give you 2 valid product keys for win7 and you reject both of them. Piss off you wankers!!!
gosgog:
I am not a 'geek', but I gave up MSN years back, I started with Ubuntu,, got into Linux, have been into Aussies U2, Mint, , Cinnamon,Bodhi & am currently in PointLinux (Mate) & love it!
There are a few versions of Mint, and it Mint by itself isn't a *Real* distro.
Its just a set of remixes, and they make the Cinnamon Desktop.
So think about Linux Mint, Mate and cinnamon as simply the "Ubuntu MATE and cinnamon remix", as there are already remixes for all the other major desktops.
A user interface is just personal prefrence. Lots of people don't like Ubuntu's Unity. So there is Kubuntu, Gubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, and Mint.
Mint also makes a debian remix as well as the famous ubuntu remixes.
Mark Shuttleworth is an egotistical asshole. I think he went totally bonkers with acusing everyone not using MIR as the "open source tea party". After that, I am going to tend to ignore everything he says as total hysteria.
His Red Hat bashing is also inane. Red Hat makes things the rest of the open source community uses, like Gnome, network manager, systemd, and is a big time contributor to the linux kernel. Cannocial is not. Cannocial makes things not widely used outside cannocial, not because they are closed, its because no one cares. Bazzar(everyone else uses git, subversion, mercury), MIR(everyone else Xorg or wayland), upstart(everyone else uses systemd made by redhat or sysv-init), and finally their own in house desktop Unity, no one else uses unity.
But if you need to put somethings in perspective, 76% of all computers on planet earth run the linux kernel. In every market except desktop Linux has a sizable represenation, from super computers, to the only non zOS mainframes, to embedded, to realtime, to phones, to servers.
Debian is the most popular server distribution of linux, which is the most popular server operating system. In fact debian has 10% of the total server market share, itself. Thats a bigger share than Apple has on the desktop. Thats large companies and governments trusting debian with their data. Thats in an enviroment that is less fail tollerant than the desktop, and ultimately more important.
When you need something that is going to work, and not fuck up, you look at debian. Debian is quite litterally the face of Linux.
Ubuntu might have %70+ of the linux desktop installs, but thats not even signifigant, because they don't have more than 0.5% of the market. No one trusts Ubuntu with their fucking data.
1. the windows command line sans powershell is fucking lame. you really can't do anything from it. its slow, clunky, and primative. It lacks even basic proccess management(ps, pgrep, kill, killall, pkill, bg, fg, etc..)
2. dated, as in fuck this mouse bullshit. the mouse is one of the most clumbsy and awkward human input devices of all time, and I for one, will chear when it gets retired
How is MATE better than GNOME 3.8 in Classic mode?
How is MATE better than Gnome 3.8 in Classic Mode?