Comments on: Should you install Ubuntu Mate?

By: Yuri

Yuri — Tue, 17 Feb 2015 16:17:25 +0000

I first tried it on my old laptop (single core, 1.5gb RAM) and it interested me enough to replace one of the partitions on my newer laptop with MATE. I still keep Ubuntu Gnome as my primary workplace and have Unity on one of the others.

All have their selling points. Why not do what I did and keep them all?

By: tea_fancier

tea_fancier — Wed, 04 Feb 2015 09:26:17 +0000

I love mate!
After all trials of Canonical, Microsoft … to reinvent the weel with Unity, Gnome3 and windows 8 I am really glad to have my good old computer desktop back.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Fri, 09 Jan 2015 20:25:47 +0000

In reply to Matticus. I'm glad you've had good luck where others haven't!

By: Matticus

Matticus — Fri, 09 Jan 2015 20:06:58 +0000

I am not sure how familiar the person who wrote this article is with Ubuntu 14.04. It’s extremely simple to indtall and use any Linux desktop environment. I use Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Mate, Cinnamon, xfce, and lxde without any problem and switch between them at the log in screen to fit whatever is currently necessary for me to use. This feller mustn’t know what he’s talking about. Just my 2 cents. Plus, unity is actually pretty innovative and awesome eye candy, but it is one of the more resource heavy environment. That’s the only reason I use lxde and mate as alternatives.

By: Erik

Erik — Mon, 29 Dec 2014 16:59:59 +0000

If I may still add something, for me as a complete newbie to linux who has first installed the vanilla Ubuntu 14.04 a few months ago and doesn’t know that much about how it specifically works, it was pretty easy for me to bring the Mate desktop to it. I had copied some commands into the console from Ubuntuusers.de that installed some additional packages and than Mate itself. After I figured out how to swich between the two desktops (Unity and Mate), it was quite simple to do, even for me.

By: Donal

Donal — Mon, 22 Dec 2014 13:10:31 +0000

After one Aw Snap message too many in Chromium, I replaced Ubuntu with Mint Cinnamon Qiana last weekend, and it upgraded to Rebecca. I was pleased to find gdebi, synaptic package manager and gimp already installed. Installing skype 4.3 was dead simple, but there was no sound. The fix for 64 bit Mint was to install libasound drivers, which wasn’t that difficult. My only gripe is that neither adduser nor useradd will add a second user. In graphical it just ignores me, in terminal it says I have to be root user.

By: Frederick Wrigley

Frederick Wrigley — Sun, 14 Dec 2014 18:05:59 +0000

I started using Ubuntu with 8.04, which used GNOME 2.3, and looked on with dismay as GNOME went downhill in the “We’re making GNOME better!” and with Unity, a very powerful desktop which does have features no other desktop has, for Linux, Apple, or Microsoft. Nonetheless, I just dislike Unity. I have been a fan of MATE ever since it was first released as a version of Mint. When Ubuntu MATE 14.04 arrived (and that was a few weeks after the 14.10 release) and I had the features I wanted in a long-term release, without installing another version of Ubuntu and then installing MATE.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Sat, 06 Dec 2014 00:06:51 +0000

So far Mate has stayed on my test bed computer longer than any distro I’v installed in the last two years. I may actually go ahead and put it on my other machine.

By: Davre Berryman

Davre Berryman — Fri, 05 Dec 2014 23:59:05 +0000

Sorry for the late words, but mine and my families 2c. I actually burned Ubuntu Mate by accident to a USB (not paying sufficient attention to anything other my daughter running, jumping hopping, “look at me,” “look at me!” Guys with girls know…
Oops sidetrack. As soon as it b ooted my girl goes,, ” woooo, let me see. I want the mouse!”She’s just turned 4 and can tell which installation is currently running (from a 4-5 total – 4-5 better than my parents…. ahhh don’t get me started, stupid ppl suck!). But from the start, don’t know if it was the green or what, becsame my daughters, wife’s and my favourite ovrernight. I haven’t comp[leted the interviews and data cruncher, but hope to explain, why even Mint Mate comes far xsecond… oh gosh, here comes yet another Phd thesis…

By: Brainstorms

Brainstorms — Sun, 09 Nov 2014 05:18:52 +0000

Greg, make your peace with Unity! It’s “just another option” with Ubuntu. Anyone can install Ubuntu using Ubuntu Server Edition, then add any desktop they wish. That’s one reason to install using the Server edition; the other is that it’s the only (workable) way to use RAID on your boot disk(s), if you want to do that.

I think most people have a “cognitive inertia” regarding the phrase “Ubuntu Server Edition”.

WRONG: “Ubuntu Server Edition is only appropriate if you’re building a server PC.”

CORRECT: “Ubuntu Server Edition is pretty much the same as the Desktop Edition, except that you have to install the desktop of your choice as a separate step. You can use it to build either a Desktop or a Server PC.”

Of course, if you want, e.g., the Xubuntu Edition of Ubuntu (Ubuntu with the XFCE desktop), then you can install it in one step: Install using the Xubuntu ISO download. Same with Kubuntu. Etc. But until there’s a “Mubuntu” ISO, then starting with the Server Edition is the way to get there.

So while Canonical has ‘broken’ this key feature with their Debian derivative, they’ve *only* broken it with the default (Unity) Desktop Edition. (And to be fair to Canonical, it seems to be because of the internal changes that need to be made in order for the same source code to compile for a PC, a tablet, or a smart phone.)

I do not think that Canonical is conspiring to make the alternative desktops go away… (And “alternative” does not mean “old”, “outdated”, “unsupported”, or “second-class”.) But I do expect Canonical to press forward with making a distro+desktop that will be multi-platform. Again, you’ll still be able to start with the Server Edition install and then add any desktop you wish to round it out.

Next, Mate is *not* the only Gnome 2-ish desktop you can install in Ubuntu! There’s also Cinnamon and XFCE (to name two). I’m hoping that they’ll officially add Cinnamon as they’re doing with Mate, since –while they’re quite similar– I think Cinnamon is a bit nicer. YMMV. And of course you get XFCE if you install the Xubuntu flavor.

One other alternative to using alternative desktops is to install an Ubuntu derivative. For Mate and Cinnamon, you can install LinuxMint, which is Ubuntu with an Irish spin: They package it with (among other things they add) Mate or Cinnamon — but not Unity. It’s still Ubuntu, however, and it’s even more friendly for new users than Canonical’s issuance is.

Having once used Gnome 3, I grew tired of finding the latest version, then tweaking it to get it to work as full-featured, etc., and dropped back to using Unity. And since v7, I find Unity to be nice enough as a ‘daily user’. I like it, but I don’t love it (enough to feel I have to defend it). Yes, in its early versions it did suck. It doesn’t suck any more, so I suggest anyone on the fence give it a go. In fact, I suggest dual-booting between a Unity install and an alternative desktop, and compare while performing your typical daily tasks.

Point is, find what you like and go with it. You can run Ubuntu with any desktop you want. Canonical is not MS and is not trying to force the market into using “only Unity”.

A note on booting USB… One of the distinctions between USB ports on a PC involve USB2 vs USB3 ports. Intel chipsets before Ivy Bridge do not include USB3 support, although a given motherboard may include a third-party USB3 chip to provide USB3 ports (such as on more powerful Sandy Bridge machines). Unless your machine’s chipset supports USB3 directly, your BIOS will typically not support booting from USB3. And as you’ve apparently found out, even then not all the USB2 ports will support booting, as some of them will also be provided via a third-party chip, not the CPU’s Intel chipset.

And it’s worse if you’re running from a VirtualBox VM: You can install Oracle’s Extension Pack in VirtualBox to get USB2 support, but you still can’t access a thumb drive plugged into a USB3 port on your machine — until they release their USB3 driver. If your machine has only USB3 ports… You’ll have to move files to/from your hard drive as an intermediary. Ugh.