Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

clfarron4 · 2014-07-17 19:33:12

@l0vot, are you building from GIT, using the mate-unstable-GTK3 or the MATE 1.9 release for this?

l0vot · 2014-07-18 10:39:52

@ clfarron4: MATE 1.9

clfarron4 · 2014-07-18 19:33:27

l0vot wrote:

@ clfarron4: MATE 1.9

Hmm... I'm not sure because I'm not using those source. The best person to contact would probably be flexiondotorg.

Anonymo · 2014-11-03 05:17:04

I'm on Mate 1.8.1 on Arch. In Caja, going to Edit>Preferences>Default View:List View makes it so Caja will crash the DE everytime I want to open Caja. I remove /home files for mate and caja and reboot to be able to use Caja again.

Edit: I has search but now I found out where to report bugs and have reported it to https://github.com/mate-desktop/caja/issues/339

Last edited by Anonymo (2014-11-03 05:27:52)

l0vot · 2014-12-06 22:33:59

flexiondotorg seems to have abandoned us, hasn't been here in months, the MATE 1.8.x problems presist, MATE 1.9.x still doesn't have an Arch repo, not even in the AUR, and I still don't know enough to fix MATE myself. I'll try installing MATE 1.9.x unstable, it seems it got updated last month. I hope it's functional.

clfarron4 · 2014-12-06 22:43:47

If I'm not mistaken:

- MATE 1.8 GTK2 still gets updates through [community]. Any issues with this should really be taken to the MATE GitHub;
- MATE 1.9 GTK3 has a separate repository located here. I've been using this for months and it works (for the most part);
- MATE 1.9 GTK2 hasn't been packaged for Arch for a few months.

With flexiondotorg also being heavily involved in the MUbuntu project, I'm not surprised that things have been slow with MATE 1.8 on Arch,

l0vot · 2014-12-09 19:41:56

@clfarron4 I used the repo you listed, and the GTK3 was functional, but had even more broken stuff than 1.8. It's weird, the more it updates the more broken it gets.

clfarron4 · 2014-12-09 20:23:52

l0vot wrote:

@clfarron4 I used the repo you listed, and the GTK3 was functional, but had even more broken stuff than 1.8. It's weird, the more it updates the more broken it gets.

I was expecting stuff to be broken. Thing is that I can't really find any issues with it as it is... I do poke around to see if I can find any broken stuff though.

Last edited by clfarron4 (2014-12-09 20:25:05)

youngdm · 2014-12-10 09:25:55

Hello,
I'm currently running Arch 3.17.4-1 with Xfce4 4.10 on a Macbook Pro 7,1 (for about 18 months). I've been pondering installing Mate as I prefer the Gnome 2 style of desktop and wondered what people think about Mate and their experiences of it? I tried Gnome 3 just before Xfce4 and really didn't like the new desktop. Xfce4 has generally been fine but although some components have been updated recently (and I think 4.11 is shipped with Xubuntu) it seems there is more active development with Mate. So I just wondered what people thought about Mate (of course I can just install Mate and try it)?
Thanks

logicgate · 2014-12-14 19:21:38

youngdm wrote:

Hello,
I'm currently running Arch 3.17.4-1 with Xfce4 4.10 on a Macbook Pro 7,1 (for about 18 months). I've been pondering installing Mate as I prefer the Gnome 2 style of desktop and wondered what people think about Mate and their experiences of it? I tried Gnome 3 just before Xfce4 and really didn't like the new desktop. Xfce4 has generally been fine but although some components have been updated recently (and I think 4.11 is shipped with Xubuntu) it seems there is more active development with Mate. So I just wondered what people thought about Mate (of course I can just install Mate and try it)?
Thanks

I've been using MATE for a week and really like it (I used GNOME 2 from 2006-2012 so I'm familiar with how things work in MATE).

I installed MATE on an old PC to try it out before I installed it on my main machine; you might consider doing that. Alternatively, you could install Arch and MATE in a virtual machine for testing. You can install MATE on your main machine without removing the other desktops but you'll get some "crossover"; applications from other desktops will show up on your menu and in the MATE Control Center, making it hard to know what's from MATE and what's not.

Good luck with your testing. :-)

youngdm · 2014-12-14 22:41:11

Logicgate,
Thanks. I don't have another pc so tried mate alongside Xfce4, which as you note did cause some minor confusion with applications. Unfortunately I kept getting an xkbd error when trying to set my keyboard type (Intel Macbook Pro) and so couldn't get the '#' key (which works fine in Xfce4) which I use a lot for commenting code so haven't done anymore with it at the moment. It's the same error as others report with libxklavier but I have version 5.4-1 (which fixed the error for some). I liked Mate from the time I did spend with it, as I prefer the traditional desktops, so will have another go at fixing the problem over the holidays.
Thanks again.

electric_indigo · 2015-01-07 08:21:06

I recently switched from Xfce to MATE and I have two minor issues.

The first one — the “child” windows in Marco (e.g. Firefox' or Medit's preferences windows) are missing min/max/close buttons when using themes which use Murrine engine (like Zukitwo or Numix).

And the second issue is the icon theme in Qt4 apps, which is ignored by default, as Qt4 is unaware of MATE's existence. According to this wiki entry, the DESKTOP_SESSION variable should be set to "gnome". While

$ DESKTOP_SESSION=gnome startx /usr/bin/mate-session -- :1

in TTY does the trick, I use LightDM and it apparently sets DESKTOP_SESSION by itself (I couldn't figure out how it's done) and ignores ~/.xinitrc; exporting the variable from within MATE doesn't work neither.
But after all there is no reason for MATE to “globally” pretend it's Gnome, so I added few lines to Qt4, making it recognize it as Gnome. Here's the patch, if anyone's interested

diff -aur qt-everywhere-opensource-src-4.8.6/src/gui/kernel/qapplication_x11.cpp qt-everywhere-opensource-src-4.8.6.new/src/gui/kernel/qapplication_x11.cpp
--- qt-everywhere-opensource-src-4.8.6/src/gui/kernel/qapplication_x11.cpp      2014-04-10 20:37:12.000000000 +0200
+++ qt-everywhere-opensource-src-4.8.6.new/src/gui/kernel/qapplication_x11.cpp  2015-01-05 21:06:22.304056556 +0100
@@ -2334,6 +2334,12 @@
                 break;
             }
 
+                       // Pretend that MATE is Gnome
+                       if (qgetenv("DESKTOP_SESSION") == "mate") {
+                           X11->desktopEnvironment = DE_GNOME;
+                           break;
+                       }
+
             // GNOME_DESKTOP_SESSION_ID is deprecated for some reason, but still check it
             if (!qgetenv("GNOME_DESKTOP_SESSION_ID").isEmpty()) {
                 X11->desktopEnvironment = DE_GNOME;

It works for me and I hope it doesn't break anything. However, compiling Qt takes several hours so it would be nice if the Qt4 packager handled this, but I guess adding yet another patch to fix such a low-severity issue would be against The Arch Way. Also, take notice of this when building Qt4; temporarily uninstalling qtwebkit was sufficient in my case.

Alad · 2015-01-07 17:19:09

Have you tried /etc/environment?

I'm not sure about your first issue, but sounds like a problem with the metacity-*.xml files in the theme folder. Murrine themes have "-1", while marco uses those with "-0". If you force it, you get bugs like described. I'd contact the theme author.

clfarron4 · 2015-01-07 17:44:10

Hey, so there's a new MATE 1.9 GTK2/3 repository available for those who want to test MATE 1.9.

Alad · 2015-01-07 17:45:21

^ Ah, I thought they discontinued the GTK2 branch

clfarron4 · 2015-01-07 17:59:29

Alad wrote:

^ Ah, I thought they discontinued the GTK2 branch

I think the initial consensus was to discontinue MATE 1.9 GTK2 for Arch, but flexiondotorg has decided to re-instate it for reasons I don't know.

electric_indigo · 2015-01-07 19:58:15

Alad wrote:

Have you tried /etc/environment?

That works, thank you!
Edit: added that hint to wiki

Last edited by electric_indigo (2015-01-07 20:24:50)

pgoetz · 2015-04-23 08:29:02

I've more or less settled on rolling out Mate on Arch as the default desktop for a few hundred workstations (so long, Ubuntu!). My only complaint so far is all the default themes (including those in the mate-themes-extras package) are a bit stodgy, and a fairly large percentage of my user base are 19-21-year olds. I like the looks of Ambiance & Radiance Flat Colors, but couldn't find a package for any additional themes, including in the AUR, which is a bit hard to search for stuff like this. Does anyone know if any additional Mate-friendly GTK2 themes have already been packaged for Arch, AUR or elsewhere?

pgoetz · 2015-04-23 15:43:45

clfarron4 wrote:

I think the initial consensus was to discontinue MATE 1.9 GTK2 for Arch, but flexiondotorg has decided to re-instate it for reasons I don't know.

This Linux Luddites podcast explains the reason for the GTK3 holdup. The Martin Wimpress interview starts at around 1:07 and is well worth listening to in its entirety.

Last edited by pgoetz (2015-04-23 20:07:42)

pgoetz · 2015-05-14 16:19:23

Does anyone know what's going on with Mate 1.10? It seems to be generally available for download, but I can't find anything in the Arch repos.

Alad · 2015-05-14 16:36:14

It's in staging, e.g https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?sor … =&flagged=

pgoetz · 2015-05-18 21:03:21

Alad wrote:

It's in staging,

3 questions:

how do you get the results from staging to show up when searching packages.archlinux.org?
Is there anything I can do to move the process along a bit? I'm working on a project for which I'd like to test the latest version of Mate
Alternatively, does it make sense to try and install stuff from staging, or is it there because it won't yet work as a standard install? (In particular, I'm not exactly sure what the difference is between staging and testing.)

Last edited by pgoetz (2015-05-18 21:03:46)

Alad · 2015-05-19 14:12:42

pgoetz wrote:

Alad wrote:
It's in staging,
3 questions:
how do you get the results from staging to show up when searching packages.archlinux.org?
Is there anything I can do to move the process along a bit? I'm working on a project for which I'd like to test the latest version of Mate
Alternatively, does it make sense to try and install stuff from staging, or is it there because it won't yet work as a standard install? (In particular, I'm not exactly sure what the difference is between staging and testing.)

1. I've just used the standard form.

2. Not sure - apparently Staging is a developer playground to prevent larger breakages in Testing.

http://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comme … ositories/
http://allanmcrae.com/2012/07/the-arch- … r-testing/

Last edited by Alad (2015-05-19 14:26:44)

pgoetz · 2015-07-23 23:05:57

I've installed Mate 1.10, and love the snappiness and simple design. Everything seems to work mostly our of the box, which is impressive. The only problem is the fonts, which generally look awful, but especially in firefox. In addition to X and sddm, I've installed:

mate
mate-terminal
mate-control-center
mate-media
ttf-dejavu
ttf-liberation\
(AUR) ttf-ms-fonts

Looking through the forums on how to make firefox look better, I also installed

freetype2-infinality
fontconfig-infinality

This actually made everything look worse, particularly mate-terminal

My screen DPI is 96, which should be good enough. I tested out Ubuntu Mate-edition on this same machine and seem to recall that it looked much nicer. What's the secret ingredient that I'm missing? Is it the Ubuntu fonts?

Update: I uninstalled the infinality stuff and installed ttf-ubuntu-font-family. Fonts still don't look good. This is the last detail holding up my deployment of Arch Mate -- any thoughts on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

Last edited by pgoetz (2015-07-24 15:22:26)

clfarron4 · 2015-07-27 13:13:35

Hmm... I flick between lots of different desktop environments (currently between MATE GTK3 and Cinnamon at the moment) and I've noticed that fonts seem to look better with Cinnamon than they do with MATE GTK3.

I'm using the default freetype, with the Ubuntu and Inconsolata fonts, with RGBA AA and slight hinting in the font settings for each DE and Cinnamon looks better IMO. When I get back from holidays, I'll look into it further.

EDIT: In response to below post about Ubuntu and Freetype - I'm pretty sure that the Ubuntu devs make their own changes to the freetype package, which they have on their launchpad. I say this as a former maintainer of the freetype-ubuntu package in the AUR, but I'm not sure what changes they made and I dropped it after we moved onto freetype 2.5.2 and the Ubuntu team didn't.

Last edited by clfarron4 (2015-07-27 22:25:50)

Arch Linux

#626 2014-07-17 19:33:12

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#627 2014-07-18 10:39:52

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#628 2014-07-18 19:33:27

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#629 2014-11-03 05:17:04

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#630 2014-12-06 22:33:59

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#631 2014-12-06 22:43:47

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#632 2014-12-09 19:41:56

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#633 2014-12-09 20:23:52

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#634 2014-12-10 09:25:55

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#635 2014-12-14 19:21:38

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#636 2014-12-14 22:41:11

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#637 2015-01-07 08:21:06

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#638 2015-01-07 17:19:09

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#639 2015-01-07 17:44:10

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#640 2015-01-07 17:45:21

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#641 2015-01-07 17:59:29

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#642 2015-01-07 19:58:15

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#643 2015-04-23 08:29:02

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#644 2015-04-23 15:43:45

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#645 2015-05-14 16:19:23

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#646 2015-05-14 16:36:14

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#647 2015-05-18 21:03:21

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#648 2015-05-19 14:12:42

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#649 2015-07-23 23:05:57

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#650 2015-07-27 13:13:35

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

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