Ubuntu MATE Is Becoming A Thriving Member Of The Ubuntu Family

Written by Michael Larabel in Ubuntu on 8 May 2015 at 09:58 AM EDT. 1 Comment
UBUNTU
Back when the GNOME 2 desktop was forked in 2011 as the MATE Desktop Environment, there were polarized views from the Linux community how this fork of GNOME2 could survive and what sort of future it would have. Four years later, MATE is still being maintained, there's distributions shipping with MATE as the default desktop, and the project is managing to stay relevant.

MATE has worked its way into Fedora and Arch (among many others with packages), MATE is even used on BSD, and with Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu MATE is part of the official Ubuntu family. This week the Ubuntu MATE developers provided an update on their custom spin of Ubuntu.

The new version of the forked desktop, MATE 1.10, is bringing many new features to the table. Ubuntu MATE plans to quickly integrate the MATE 1.10 packages while also adding X2Go (a remote terminal solution), provide an integrated launcher possibly for Ubuntu 15.10, and ship other new packages. The Ubuntu MATE team has started coming up with their own packages like plug-ins, mate-lockkeys-applet, mate-disk-utility, and caja-dropbox. Ubuntu MATE also was recently ported to the Raspberry Pi 2.

Ubuntu/MATE fans wishing to learn more can watch the video below or jump straight over to these Ubuntu-MATE.org slides. Overall, it looks like Ubuntu MATE has a bright future ahead and they're brewing lots of plans for Ubuntu 15.04 and 16.04 LTS.

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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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