Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

Silkworm205 · 2015-07-27 13:51:38

Pgoetz, maybe it's dependent on some Ubuntu specific patches. Or maybe the font settings are different from Ubuntu Mate's settings. Are they set to rgba with slight hinting?

brebs · 2015-07-27 14:35:46

pgoetz wrote:

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?

Is that your screen's REAL, *physical* DPI?

Read wiki and the Infinality threads listed at the bottom of it.

A screenshot would be useful.

pgoetz · 2015-08-03 20:25:55

Silkworm205 wrote:

Or maybe the font settings are different from Ubuntu Mate's settings. Are they set to rgba with slight hinting?

Yes, this is one of the things I checked and fiddled around with.

pgoetz · 2015-08-03 21:08:24

brebs wrote:

Is that your screen's REAL, *physical* DPI?
Read wiki and the Infinality threads listed at the bottom of it.
A screenshot would be useful.

Hmm, maybe not. I measure 37.6cm x 30cm with 1280x1024 resolution, which gives more like 86.7 DPI. I changed the screen resolution to 86dpi, and if anything that made the fonts look worse in firefox. Switching from VRGB to RGB didn't seem to have a visible effect; likely because the pixels are relatively square.

The BBS doesn't allow images, so are you suggesting I place a screenshot in pastebin, or something like this?

pgoetz · 2015-08-04 10:38:36

OK, I guess it was the monitor. I did another fresh install (with no additional fonts outside the mate group) and now the fonts look fine in firefox.

pgoetz · 2015-08-14 19:44:05

I've been using sddm + Mate 1.10 on a few systems and haven't had any problems. However, all these systems were with intel graphics (xf86-video-intel).

I just tried setting up a new machine with an nvidia card, and now I can't properly log out or switch users. Has anyone else seen this?

When I try logging out the session becomes frozen, but any terminals, firefox windows, etc. stay on the screen. I have to extricate myself using

<Ctrl>-<Alt>-F2
sudo systemctl restart sddm

Anyone else experienced this or know what is going on? I filed a bug upstream with sddm, but am not sure sddm is the culprit.

Edit/Correction: The mate-terminals do go away, however the firefox windows just stay on the screen. If I log in and then immediately try to log out, the interface just hangs at the Mate wallpaper, and I have to systemctl restart sddm to get out.

Last edited by pgoetz (2015-08-14 19:50:41)

Silkworm205 · 2015-08-14 20:14:57

Have you installed the right Nvidia drivers for your graphics chipset?
Also, are you using the stock Mate window manager or another one like compiz?

pgoetz · 2015-08-14 20:25:56

Silkworm205 wrote:

Have you installed the right Nvidia drivers for your graphics chipset?
Also, are you using the stock Mate window manager or another one like compiz?

I did install the current Nvidia drivers and am using the stock Mate window manager.

Update: I uninstalled sddm and installed and enabled lightdm and now logging out works properly. This indicates that the problem is sddm + Nvidia related.

Unfortunately attempting to switch users using lightdm hard crashes the entire system -- WTF? I tried switching users and then had to use the hardware switch to reset the system. No virtual console access, nothing. I only had one non-root user defined, and will test again with a second user created.

In case someone is reading through this, installing lightdm and uninstalling sddm does not automatically disable the sddm service. You have to do this by hand or systemd won't let you enable lightdm.

Last edited by pgoetz (2015-08-14 20:43:44)

pgoetz · 2015-08-14 20:37:15

Even with multiple users defined, the nvidia + mate + lightdm combination consistently results in the entire system crashing and requiring a hardware reboot.

I'm kind of at a loss for what to try next. I was hoping to be able to deploy sddm + mate to a number of systems, but can't get this to work consistently when using different video cards, and the lightdm + mate isn't faring much better.

To be clear, when using intel graphics, most of the time sddm + mate works flawlessly. In one case, the out of the box install of sddm + mate + mate-media + firefox resulted in youtube videos not playing -- I still haven't figured this one out, since youtube has worked (without requiring flashplugin or any additional installs before, including on Nvidia). However, not being able to logout when using Nvidia graphics is a deal killer.

Silkworm205 · 2015-08-15 00:24:09

You say you installed the current ones. There's the nvidia stock, nvidia-340xx and nvidia-304xx which you need to bear in mind.
You could try bypassing the login screen and just launching an xsession directly from the TTY. (Just for debugging purposes of course, rolling that out to other machines would give people a headache.)
Another Login manager to try is LXDM. Simple, but a good GTK theme and background make it a very nice choice.

pgoetz · 2015-08-15 02:28:49

Silkworm205 wrote:

You say you installed the current ones. There's the nvidia stock, nvidia-340xx and nvidia-304xx which you need to bear in mind. ...
Another Login manager to try is LXDM. Simple, but a good GTK theme and background make it a very nice choice.

I think the problem is Nvidia -- either the card or the driver. I'm using the stock nvidia driver, which I think is 352. I couldn't get Ubuntu Mate edition to run on the machine at all. The nouveau driver would crash on boot, and when I replaced with the nvidia .deb in 15.04 (346), it crashed even harder, freezing the screen and forcing a hard boot. At least the nouveau driver dropped me into a root shell (which, if you think about it, is a bit of a problem all in itself). It's kind of annoying, as this is a rather expensive workstation. Had I just left out the Nvidia card and gone with intel graphics I wouldn't be having these problems. The client has been waiting for over a month to ship this machine fully configured up to New York, and I'm still clueless as to what user friendly linux distro I can install on it that will be stable and relatively current.

Last edited by pgoetz (2015-08-15 02:30:26)

pgoetz · 2015-08-25 10:56:57

Audio Issues

I've been doing a very basic Arch/Mate install which has been working fine on systems, with say Intel chipset audio + Realtek ALC889 codec:

 # pacman -S xf86-video-intel  xorg-server  ttf-dejavu  mate  sddm  mate-terminal  mate-media firefox

Installing nothing else (other than base), the audio slider control appears on the Mate panel, I can play youtube videos, and audio just works. Seeing that this install pulled in libpulse 6.0-2 as a dependency, I naively marked down in my notes that pulseaudio was being installed by default.

Recently I've been trying to set up a new system which comes with the Realtek ALC1150 codec using the same basic setup, and the first sign of trouble was that the audio slider didn't appear on the panel, and there was no way to add it. Using the alsa-utils package. in particular

 # aplay -L
 # speaker-test -Dfront:PCH -c 2

I was able to determine that audio is actually working on the system, but the default audio device is not being set, which is probably why Mate isn't presenting the audio slider. Investigating further it became clear that pulseaudio is actually not brought in as a dependency.

This raised the following questions:

How was audio even working on the other systems I set up -- just by using the raw ALSA drivers?
What is the difference between mate-media and mate-media-pulseaudio?
Wat's the purpose of the libpulse 6.0-2 dependency if Mate, by default, is just using the raw ALSA drivers?
(this isn't really Mate-specific but) the pulseaudio-alsa package (which contains the single file /etc/asound.conf) exists because some people still want to use OSS?

It seems like some documentation on audio issues should be added to the Mate Wiki page.

Last edited by pgoetz (2015-08-25 11:00:46)

Alad · 2015-08-25 14:37:59

1. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ad … sound_card
2. One uses libalsa, the other pulseaudio.
3. Arch splits the Pulse server and the matching libraries, so that programs can support its features without you having to actually use Pulse.
4. pulseaudio-alsa has nothing to do with OSS. It's so you can easily forward programs with no Pulse support to Pulse.

edit: it seems there's only mate-media at this stage.

Last edited by Alad (2015-08-25 14:41:39)

pgoetz · 2015-08-25 19:11:00

Alad wrote:

edit: it seems there's only mate-media at this stage.

Ack! Does this mean one cannot use pulseaudio with the Mate desktop at this time? That would be an awfully huge deal killer for a lot of users. Also, I'm not sure how this could be, given the Ubuntu Mate edition, which is presumably just as dependent on pulseaudio as Ubuntu standard is.

If the problem is just that no one has bothered packaging mate-media-pulseaudio for Arch, then I would like to know what's involved facilitating this and am curious as to why it hasn't been done already.

Thanks!

clfarron4 · 2015-08-25 20:16:07

pgoetz wrote:

Alad wrote:
edit: it seems there's only mate-media at this stage.
Ack! Does this mean one cannot use pulseaudio with the Mate desktop at this time? That would be an awfully huge deal killer for a lot of users. Also, I'm not sure how this could be, given the Ubuntu Mate edition, which is presumably just as dependent on pulseaudio as Ubuntu standard is.
If the problem is just that no one has bothered packaging mate-media-pulseaudio for Arch, then I would like to know what's involved facilitating this and am curious as to why it hasn't been done already.
Thanks!

I'd message the TU Martin Wimpress (forum name: flexiondotorg) about this, as they are responsible for the MATE packaging in Arch.

Alad · 2015-08-25 20:59:13

https://github.com/mate-desktop/mate-media/issues/17

pgoetz · 2015-08-25 21:06:51

Alad wrote:

https://github.com/mate-desktop/mate-media/issues/17

My interpretation of this is that the mate-media-pulseaudio package is obsolete, but I'll try to confirm with Martin and will test the system out with pulseaudio tomorrow morning. Thanks!

Alad · 2015-08-25 21:15:12

Yep, it should Just Work.™ Let us know how it goes.

pgoetz · 2015-08-25 21:49:04

clfarron4 wrote:

I'd message the TU Martin Wimpress (forum name: flexiondotorg) about this, as they are responsible for the MATE packaging in Arch.

I thought this would be obvious, but must now resort to asking: how to I message someone on the FluxBB bbs?

Alad · 2015-08-26 04:44:43

I'd expect via User list, but there's no PM button. You can use Google+ instead:

https://plus.google.com/+MartinWimpress/posts

pgoetz · 2015-08-26 14:28:06

Update: So, I installed pulseaudio:

 # pacman -S pulseaudio pulseaudio-alsa

and now it just works.(™) I think some updates to the Mate Wiki page are in order for the next person who comes along with newer sound gear. The only question I still have is how necessary is pulseaudio-alsa? I didn't have time to experiment this morning, but will Mate not just work if someone fails to install pulseaudio-alsa, or this is package just required for certain applications which aren't necessarily part of the usual Mate desktop install?

If I can get an answer to this question, I'll add some audio notes to the Wiki page today; else it will have to wait until later in the week when I have time to experiment.

V1del · 2015-08-26 16:02:57

@pgoetz pulseaudio-alsa is necessary for any application that can't use pulse natively and only has alsa support, yet one still wants to route it through pulse, notable examples are flashplayer and wine. I don't think there would be any mate specific application only having support for pure alsa, as they most likely use a framework (mate-media, as you've found out, which in turn uses gstreamer) to produce sound, which contains native pulse support

Last edited by V1del (2015-08-26 16:08:25)

Hunter275 · 2015-10-16 07:12:55

Hi, I'm having issues with my Settings. I am trying to edit my display settings and the button does not react, when I run "mate-display-properties" in the command line I get the following error:

**
MateDesktop:ERROR:mate-rr-config.c:661:mate_rr_config_load_current: assertion failed: (mate_rr_config_match (config, config))
Aborted (core dumped)

I am running MATE 1.10.2.

pgoetz · 2015-10-25 14:08:28

Hunter275 wrote:

Hi, I'm having issues with my Settings. I am trying to edit my display settings and the button does not react

I have a nearly absolute minimal mate install. Make sure you have all these packages installed (or know why any of them are not installed) on your system:

[administrator@frog administrator]$ pacman -Q | grep mate
libmatekbd 1.10.0-1
libmatemixer 1.10.0-1
libmateweather 1.10.0-1
mate-backgrounds 1.10.0-1
mate-control-center 1.10.1-1
mate-desktop 1.10.2-1
mate-icon-theme 1.10.1-1
mate-media 1.10.0-2
mate-menus 1.10.0-1
mate-notification-daemon 1.10.1-1
mate-panel 1.10.1-1
mate-polkit 1.10.2-2
mate-session-manager 1.10.2-1
mate-settings-daemon 1.10.2-1
mate-terminal 1.10.1-1
mate-themes 1.10.5-1
mate-user-guide 1.10.1-1
[administrator@frog administrator]$

Last edited by pgoetz (2015-10-25 14:08:50)

Alad · 2015-10-27 19:47:22

Hunter275 wrote:

Hi, I'm having issues with my Settings. I am trying to edit my display settings and the button does not react, when I run "mate-display-properties" in the command line I get the following error:
**
MateDesktop:ERROR:mate-rr-config.c:661:mate_rr_config_load_current: assertion failed: (mate_rr_config_match (config, config))
Aborted (core dumped)
I am running MATE 1.10.2.

https://github.com/mate-desktop/mate-co … ter/issues

Arch Linux

#651 2015-07-27 13:51:38

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#652 2015-07-27 14:35:46

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#653 2015-08-03 20:25:55

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#654 2015-08-03 21:08:24

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#655 2015-08-04 10:38:36

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#656 2015-08-14 19:44:05

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#657 2015-08-14 20:14:57

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#658 2015-08-14 20:25:56

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#659 2015-08-14 20:37:15

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#660 2015-08-15 00:24:09

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#661 2015-08-15 02:28:49

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#662 2015-08-25 10:56:57

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#663 2015-08-25 14:37:59

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#664 2015-08-25 19:11:00

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#665 2015-08-25 20:16:07

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#666 2015-08-25 20:59:13

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#667 2015-08-25 21:06:51

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#668 2015-08-25 21:15:12

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#669 2015-08-25 21:49:04

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#670 2015-08-26 04:44:43

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#671 2015-08-26 14:28:06

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#672 2015-08-26 16:02:57

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#673 2015-10-16 07:12:55

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#674 2015-10-25 14:08:28

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

#675 2015-10-27 19:47:22

Re: Mate Desktop Environment - GNOME2 fork

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