The active window that appear on the panel is highlighted with a light green i.e Mint color. Thus, it is easy to switch between the running applications. Void: If you love silver and black colors, Void Linux. Mint theme is for you. Droit: Like Windows 7 and 8x, Droit style uses blue color to a great extent.

Ubuntu MATE 19.10 is a significant improvement over Ubuntu MATE 18.04 and 19.04.The theme of this release is to address as many “paper-cut” issues aspossible. Every new feature in Ubuntu MATE 19.10 has been added to addressbugs or poor user experience. Many long standing paper-cuts are finallyresolved. Make yourself a cup of tea ☕ and get a slice of cake 🍰 before readingon to find out what we’ve been working on for the last 25 weeks.

Ubuntu MATE 19.10 - paper 🧻 cut ️🔪 release

I have not been completely happy 😞 with the quality of recent Ubuntu MATEreleases. All the important stuff works but there have been niggly issuesthat by themselves are not deal breakers, but in aggregate are frustrating 😠and spoil the experience. I’ve been focused on resolving these issues duringthe 19.10 development cycle and you’ll see that every new feature in UbuntuMATE 19.10 addresses one of these paper-cuts. We’ve achieved this by expandingour QA team significantly and Ubuntu MATE 19.10 has been subject to weeklytesting throughout this cycle. I can’t thank our QA team enough forhighlighting the issues that need attention.

Most of the paper-cut effort has been focused around the window manager,the panel and the indicators as these are the main touching points of thedesktop environment that users interact with.

MATE Desktop 1.22.2

Upstream MATE Desktop recently released 1.22.2.All the updates are present in Ubuntu MATE 19.10 plus I’ve cherry 🍒 picked agood deal of fixes from MATE Desktop development snapshots. In total, 67additional patches have been applied to the MATE Desktop packages in UbuntuMATE 19.10 to finesse this release prior to launch day 🚀 Included in thosepatches are fixes for locking the screen on resume from suspend, addinga Media Information extension to the file manager, performanceimprovements for the window manager and cycling external displays usingSuper + p. All this work has also been submittedto Debian.

Since the final beta we worked on the following:

• Added experimental ZFS 🗄 install option.
• Fixed rendering window controls on HiDPI 🔍 displays.
• Fixed irregular icon sizes 📏 in MATE Control Center and made them render nicely on HiDPI displays.
• Fixed Caja 📂 extensions not loading.
• Fixed mate-power-manager 🔌 so it uses upower-glib get_devices2().
• Fixed Pluma 🗒 plugins not loading.
• Fixed a crasher 💣 in MATE Dock Applet due to an Attribute error in adjust_minimise_pos().
• Fixed a gnome-keyring timeout ⏱ in mate-session-manager.
• Fixed Codec 🎞 updates in Software Boutique.
• Updated Advanced MATE Menu ⚙ to use the start-here icon, so all menus are consistent.
• Updated the Ubuntu MATE Guide ❓
• Updated the Ubiquity Slideshow 🎭

Window Manager improvements

Marco is the Window Manager for MATE Desktop and in Ubuntu MATE 19.10it brings a number of new features and fixes.

XPresent support is properly fixed which means that screen tearing is nowa thing of the past and invisible window corners are finally here! Invisiblewindow corners mean that windows can be easily resized 📏 without having toprecisely grab the window corners. HiDPI rendering improvements fix a numberof rendering problems that were present in various themes and components,most notably windows controls are now HIDPI aware.

Alt+Tab navigation makes it possible totraverse the application switcher via keyboard and mouse. We’ve also cleanedup the window controls by removing the menu button. The menu is stillavailable either by right clicking the window title bar or pressingAlt + Space.

Compiz & Compton

The main reason we’ve been shipping shipping Compton and Compiz in Ubuntu MATEwas to offer a solution to screen tearing or improve game performance. Compizhas invisible window borders and also has a great screen magnifier suitablefor visually impaired users. However, now that…

• Magnus (see below) provides screen magnification
• Marco supports invisible windows borders
• Marco has improved Alt+Tab behaviour
• Marco is free from screen tearing
• Marco frame performance when gaming is further improved
• Using Compton and Compiz with MATE Desktop introduces other bugs and integration issues

…it is time to remove Compiz and Compton from the default Ubuntu MATEinstall. The fundamental reasons for including them no longer exist.

If you love 😍 Compiz, it can be installed by opening a terminal and runningthe following command: Mott the hoopla wildlife rar file download.

Only having one window manager to target means we can promptly deliver newfeatures and minimise development effort. Which brings us to…

New Key-bindings

The key-bindings for window tiling have only worked on full keyboards ⌨️ with a10-key pad. Few laptops 💻 have a 10-key pad and not all keyboards have a10-key either. There are some well known key-bindings from other platforms thatwere not recognised in Ubuntu MATE. So, we’ve had a think 🤔 and come up with this:

• Maximise Window:Super + Up
• Restore Window:Super + Down
• Title Window right:Super + Right
• Title Window left:Super + Left
• Center Window:Alt + Super + c
• Title Window to upper right corner:Alt + Super + Right
• Title Window to upper left corner:Alt + Super + Left
• Title Window to lower right corner:Shift + Alt + Super + Right
• Title Window to lower left Corner:Shift + Alt + Super + Left
• Shade Window:Control + Alt + s

I’m happy 😀 with these key-bindings as it is now possible to tile a window toall screen quadrants 📐 using any keyboard form factor.

We updated the application launcher key-bindings, some of these have existedin Ubuntu MATE for a while:

• Cycle external displays:Super + p
• Lock Screen:Super + L
• Screenshot a rectangle:Shift + PrintScr
• Open File Manager:Super + e
• Open Terminal:Super + t
• Open Control Center:Super + i
• Open Search:Super + s
• Open Task Manager:Control + Shift + Escape
• Open System Information:Super + Pause

The key-bindings compliment existing well established alternatives. So ifCtrl + Alt + t (Terminal) andCtrl + Alt + L (Lock Screen) are ingrained inyour muscle 💪 memory 🧠 they are still available too. You can find all thekeyboard shortcuts documented in the Getting Started section of Ubuntu MATEWelcome.

Panel & Indicator improvements

This is where a good deal of effort has been invested. Let’s break it down.

Brisk Menu and MATE Dock Applet

Brisk Menu is under the Solus GitHuborganisation, but it’s been a couple of years since it had a new release. TheSolus Project gave me administrative access 🔱 to the Brisk Menu repo and I’vemade a new release. Thanks to the efforts of a couple of Ubuntu MATEcontributors several bug 🐞 fixes have landed too, which includes resolvingfrequent crashers in Brisk Menu, preventing a scrollbar always appearingin the category column of the menu and silencing sounds firing as yourollover menu entries.

The previous maintainer of MATE Dock Appletannounced that he no longer had the time ⌛️ to develop the project. UbuntuMATE has taken on ownership and we’ve already published a couple of newreleases 🤘 which include fixes for frequent crashes.

MATE Panel

MATE Panel has had a long standing bug fixed that caused it to crash 💥 whenthe panel was reset or replaced. This was most noticeable when switching panellayouts via MATE Tweak and could result in the panel layout being leftincomplete or entirely absent. This bug is now fixed! MATE Tweak has beenupdated to neatly integrate with with fixed MATE Panel behaviour so that layoutswitching is now 100% reliable.

Indicators

A bug which resulted in oversized icons in indicators is finally resolved.

However, it turned out some of the bugs were due to the icons 🎨 themselves.Over 💯 icons have been refactored 🖌️️ to correct their resolutions or aspectratio; as a result the panel and indicators both scale correctly.

A race condition that could result in two network status icons beingdisplayed is fixed, and when connected via VPN, lock icons are nowoverlayed on the Network Indicator. The battery 🔋 indicator is improvedand now has a larger charging symbol while charging.

We’ve added the Date/Time Indicator and integrated it with MATE Desktopand it now replaces the MATE clock applet which corrects the placement ofthe clock and session indicators.

We’ve finally addressed a long standing issue which has been around sinceUbuntu MATE 14.10 🕸️ Some of the monochrome symbolic icons used in theindicators were also used in applications. The presented a couple of issues:

• In some cases you couldn’t easily see the icons against the window base colour.
• The mix of monochrome and full colour icons in applications looked inconsistent.

This issue is now resolved, monochrome symbolic icons are only used forindicators and full colour icons are used in the Control Center, SoundPreferences, Bluetooth, OSD, etc.

MATE Window Applets

MATE Window Appletshave received a number a bug fixes and new features from a communitycontributor. Window control icons now dynamically load from the currentlyselected theme, rather than requiring manual user configuration, anda number of bugs (including significant memory leaks) have also beenresolved.

Notification Center

Ubuntu MATE 19.10 includes a new Indicator that provides a “notificationcenter” 🔔 We worked with the upstream developer to add new featuresto indicator-notificationsand integrate it with MATE Notifications Daemon.

We now have a notification center which also offers a “do not disturb” 🛑feature. When do not disturb is enabled, notifications will not be displayedbut will be captured in the notification center for review. It’s alsopossible to blacklist some notifications, so they are never stored by thenotification center. I’ve created an icon theme for the notification center soit fits the look and feel of the default Ubuntu MATE theme. Notification hintsare also fixed so any notifications supplying additional media, such assounds or icons, now work.

Personally, I love ❤️ this feature! No more will I have awkward messages frommy Mum flash up while I’m presenting 😜

Evolution replaces Thunderbird

The Ubuntu MATE development team discussed the pros and cons of switching thedefault mail ✉️ client in Ubuntu MATE toEvolution. Here is a summary of our assessment:

• Thunderbird does not integrate as well with the desktop.
  • For example, theme integration, font integration, compatibility with HUD (which is increasingly difficult to support in Thunderbird), notifications with action buttons, locale and spell checking.
• Thunderbird & Lightning occupies 171MB on the ISO image, while Evolution uses 46MB.
• Evolution integrates well with MATE Desktop given that both use GTK3.
• Evolution includes interoperability with LibreOffice, for which Ubuntu MATE is already shipping the required components.
• Evolution has superior integration with Google Mail and Exchange, including calendar, contacts, tasks, and memos.

Indicator Date/Time also integrates with Evolution. It is fully functional,all the features of creating new events or opening upcoming events from theindicator work. Clicking on a day in the month displays the events for theselected day etc.

For the many people who use web-mail exclusively this change will have noimpact, but for those who use desktop mail we feel these productivity 📈improvements are significant.

For those of you who love 💕 Thunderbird and wish to continue using it: we willcontinue to offer Thunderbird in the Software Boutique for a one-click install.Likewise, Evolution is now in the Software Boutique so can be installed/removedwith one-click too.

GNOME MPV replaces VLC

We have switched from VLC to GNOME MPV, soon be renamed toCelluloid, for the default mediaplayer 🎬 The reasons for switching to GNOME MPV are similar to swapping outThunderbird for Evolution; better desktop integration.

We’ve changed GNOME MPV’s default UI to better fit in with MATE Desktop bynot using client side decorations (CSD). GNOME MPV has an MPRIS implementationthat completely integrates with the Sound Indicator. GNOME MPV uses less spaceon the ISO image compared to VLC and we’ll get on to why that is important later.

GNOME MPV doesn’t offer the extensive array of preferences and optionsto users that VLC does, and instead ships sane defaults; only surfacingoptions where they make sense. GNOME MPV is a GTK3 application whereas VLC usesQt5. GNOME MPV looks right at home in Ubuntu MATE which uses GTK3 throughout.While we’ve done our best to coerce VLC to take hints from the GTK theme, ithas never been perfect. Most importantly, GNOME MPV is an excellent mediaplayer with the same broad media format support that VLC offers. Ubuntu MATE20.04 will ship Celluloid 🎞️, the new name for GNOME MPV. VLC will remain inthe Software Boutique as a single click install for anyone who wants it.

Magnus

Most desktop environments are lacking a screen magnifier, which is an essentialapplication for visually impaired 👓 computer users and also useful for accurategraphical design or detail work. One of the reasons we ship Compiz in UbuntuMATE is because it has an excellent screen magnifier and was our solution forpeople who need magnification 🔍

I collaborated with my friend Stuart Langridgeto create Magnus; a very simpledesktop magnifier, showing the area around the mouse pointer in a separatewindow magnified two, three, four, or five times. Magnus is now shipped 🚢by default in Ubuntu MATE 19.10, Ubuntu Budgie 19.10 and other distros arealready picking up it too 💪

Ubuntu MATE Themes

Dozens of theme related bugs have been fixed and the Ubuntu MATE themes havebeen added to the gtk-common-themes used by snaps, so snapped applicationsare themed correctly for Ubuntu MATE users now. This change is alreadyavailable all the way back to Ubuntu MATE 16.04.

The most noticeable theme issues that have been resolved are expanders in treeview are now a sensible size (they were so tiny) so you can easily click them,window controls are correctly proportioned on CSD windows and we’ve add asplash of Chelsea Cucumber 🥒 to the Ubuntu MATE logo on the menu. Everythingthe QA team highlighted has been fixed 🔨

MATE Tweak and Ubuntu MATE Welcome

MATE Tweak now preserves user preferences when switching between customlayouts thanks to a community contribution.

If you’re familiar with MATE Tweak you’ll know it can switch panel layoutsto somewhat mimic other platforms and distros 🐧 We have now integrated agraphical layout switcher in Ubuntu MATE Welcome to better promote the featureand make it more accessible. We have actually had this feature since 18.04 butthe bugs in MATE Panel I mentioned earlier meant it didn’t work. With all theassociated panel bugs fixed 🔧 we now have this:

NVIDIA drivers

If you’ve been following the news surrounding Ubuntu you’ll know thatUbuntu will be shipping 🚢 the NVIDIA proprietary drivers on the ISO images.Anyone selecting the additional 3rd party hardware drivers during installationwithout an Internet connection will have the drivers available in offline scenarios.

This comes at the cost of increasing the ISO size by ~115MB, but I think thistrade-off is worth it. The drivers are not active by default, just present inthe apt repository provided on the ISO image to facilitate installation shouldthey be requested. But, if your computer has an NVIDIA GPU, you can now havethe drivers installed and operational immediately following install 🌟

Post-install, Ubuntu MATE users with computers that support hybrid graphicswill see the MATE Optimus hybrid graphics applet displaying the NVIDIA logo.

Now the NVIDIA 435 drivers are in Ubuntu 19.10, I have given MATE Optimus anupdate. MATE Optimus adds support for NVIDIA On-Demand and will now promptusers to log out when switching the GPU’s profile. MATE, XFCE, Budgie,Cinnamon, GNOME, KDE and LXQt are all supported. Wrappers, called offload-glx&offload-vulkan can be used to easily offload games/apps to the PRIMErenderer. I’m also delighted to see Ubuntu Budgie 19.10 are shipping MATEOptimus too!

The NVIDIA drivers are now going to receive updates via the officialUbuntu software repository. So no need to add a PPA to get updates and moreimportantly, the NVIDIA drivers are signed (which is not supported fordrivers distributed via PPA) so you can keep Secure Boot enabled.

ISO optimisations

In order to squeeze those ~115MB of NVIDIA drivers on the ISO while keepingthe ISO at ~2.0GB required some optimisation. Certainly switching to Evolutionhelped a bit. We’ve also dropped Brasero from the default installedapplications because optical media burning is not a widespread use casethese days. Brasero is still in Software Boutique should you need it.

The main gains came from analysing the data we have about our user distributionacross countries and changing what language packs we make available on the ISO.We get the data from snap metricsand the Ubuntu Report.

We dropped Chinese, Japanese and Indic language packs from the ISO and addedRussian. This dropped the ISO size considerably and the savings gained werejust about equivalent to what the NVIDIA drivers require.

We are currently shipping English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, French,Italian and Russian language packs on the iso, with each language includingall regional dialect variations. Anyone in other parts of the world will getthe language packs providing they have an Internet connection during the install.

Other gains were made by:

• Changing to format of the weather station database which saved 15MB 😱
• Removing Qt4 components. Qt4 is being removed from Debian and Ubuntu.
• Removing fcitx from the Live environment.
• Removing obsolete software from the ship-live seed.
• Removed usb-creator-gtk from the default install. GNOME Disks provides image writing capabilities.
• Reducing the size of Ubuntu MATE Welcome and Software Boutique snaps.
• Using image optimisation tools on every graphic asset in the default themes, icon themes and wallpaper back-catalog.

Had we not optimised the ISO image it would have been 2.5GB, but insteadit remains just a hair over 2.0GB while now hosting the NVIDIA drivers and 7language packs. So, while the Ubuntu MATE ISO image is larger than some,a good chunk of that size is hosting drivers and language packs that willprobably never end up getting installed on your computer. The languagepacks and drivers are there to best service our diverse community of usersfrom across the world 🗺️ running a variety of hardware 💻

ZFS on root

Support for ZFS as the root filesystem is added as an experimental feature in 19.10.The ZFS file system and partitioning layout is handled automatically directly via the installer.

You can read more details on Didier Roche’s blogs:

GPD MicroPC & other UMPCs

Alongside the generic image for 64-bit Intel PCs, we’re also releasing abespoke image for the GPD MicroPC whichincludes hardware specific tweaks to get this device working “out of the box”without any faffing about. See our UMPC page for more details.

Major Applications

Accompanying MATE Desktop 1.22.2 and Linux 5.3.0 are Firefox 69.0.1,GNOME MPV 0.16, LibreOffice 6.3.1.2 and Evolution 3.34.0.

See the Ubuntu 19.10 ReleaseNotes for details of allthe changes and improvements in Ubuntu that Ubuntu MATE benefits from.

Download Ubuntu MATE 19.10

Our download page makes it easy to acquire the most suitable build for your hardware.

Download

Upgrading from Ubuntu MATE 19.04

• Open the “Software & Updates” from the Control Center.
• Select the 3rd Tab called “Updates”.
• Set the “Notify me of a new Ubuntu version” dropdown menu to “For any new version”.
• Press Alt+F2 and type in update-manager -c into the command box.
• Update Manager should open up and tell you: New distribution release ‘19.10’ is available.
  • If not, you can use /usr/lib/ubuntu-release-upgrader/check-new-release-gtk
• Click “Upgrade” and follow the on-screen instructions.

Known Issues

Here are the known issues.

Ubuntu MATE

• Caja dropbox does not start.
  • The libdropbox_apex.so shared object, as distributed by Dropbox, has the wrong file permissions.
  • See How to fix libdropbox_apex.so problem with latest Dropbox?.
  • The workaround is to open a terminal and run the following command:

Ubuntu family issues

This is our known list of bugs that affects all flavours.

• Ubiquity slide shows are missing for OEM installs of Ubuntu MATE and Ubuntu Budgie
  • To work around this, run apt install oem-config-slideshow-ubuntu-mate in the OEM prepare session.

You’ll also want to check the Ubuntu MATE bug tracker to see what has alreadybeen reported. These issues will be addressed in due course.

Feedback

Is there anything you can help with or want to be involved in? Maybe you justwant to discuss your experiences or ask the maintainers some questions. Pleasecome and talk to us.

Following the first and the second tutorials, it's MATE Desktop's turn now getting customized with Yosemite Theme Pack. We will use OS-X-Yosemite as both interior (GTK3) and exterior (Metacity) themes, McHigh Sierra as icon theme, Madmac as Plank theme, plus some more tweaks done via MATE Tweak Tool. You don't need to install any additional software package. This customization has been tested and worked on Ubuntu MATE 18.04 LTS. It's really fun and everybody new to customization can benefit from the basics practiced here. Enjoy it, and share with your friends!

Subscribe to UbuntuBuzz Telegram Channel to get article updates directly.

On customization, see also KDE4 on KDE5 KDE-MojaveCT GNOME-McMojave

Result Talks First

This is the one we want to achieve.
And this is how global menu looks like with Caja File Manager:

And this is the GNOME Disk Utility showing:

And this one is Shotwell Photo Manager showing:

Requirements

I did this customization on Ubuntu MATE 18.04 LTS with MATE 1.20.1. My composition is:

• MATE Tweak Tool (built-in)
• Appearance editor (built-in)
• Plank (bottom dock)
• Cupertino layout (built-in)
• Compton with adaptive compositor enabled (built-in)
• GTK3 theme: OS X Yosemite https://www.mate-look.org/p/1013490
• Metacity theme: included in OS X Yosemite
• Icon theme: McHigh Sierra https://www.mate-look.org/p/1013714
• Plank theme: MadMac: https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1208015

What we will do

We will install Controls theme, Window Border theme, and Icons theme like pictures below.

We will adjust our MATE Tweak Tool to use a custom Cupertino Layout and to enable Marco window manager compositing. See pictures below.

Step 1: set wallpaper

Like previous articles, you can download macOS wallpapers from sites like 512 pixels.

Step 2: set icon theme

The icon theme is McHigh Sierra. Download it from https://www.mate-look.org/p/1013714/. Extract it and copy the folder into ~/.icons. Enable it by right-click desktop area > Change Background > see Themes tab > select first theme > Customize > Icons > select MacOSX > OK.

Step 3: set window decoration

The Metacity theme here is OS-X-Yosemite. Download it from https://www.mate-look.org/p/1013490/. Extract it and copy the folder into ~/.themes. Enable it by right-click on desktop area > Change Background > see Themes tab > select first theme > Customize > see Window Border tab > select OS-X-Yosemite > close.

Step 4: set GTK3 theme

The GTK3 theme here is also OS-X-Yosemite. This GTK3 theme is already included along with Metacity theme above. If you have already installed it, you don't need to do anything else. Enable it by right-click on desktop area > Change Background > see Theme tab > select first theme > Customize > see Controls tab > select OS-X-Yosemite theme > OK.

Note that MATE has close relationship to GNOME so you may also download any GTK3 theme from gnome-look.org site instead of mate-look.org. Also note that starting from version 1.18 MATE has already been fully GTK3. So every GTK3 theme is compatible with both desktops.

Step 5: switch to MATE Cupertino layout

Start MATE Tweak and switch panel layout to Cupertino. This makes the desktop shows top panel (with global menu) and bottom dock (Plank), a basic setup of macOS. You will later edit the panel layout and save the edited layout as another name.

Step 6: modify top panel

• Set panel thickness from 28 to 24
• Set panel transparency to 80%
• Remove start menu
• Add finder button

After you enabled Cupertino, it is a little bit complicated to edit the panel as you need to remove an applet and then unlock another one in order to be able to edit the panel. Anyway, here's how:

• First: right-click the Brisk menu button > Remove > Brisk menu removed.
• Second: right-click the global menu applet > Unlock > right-click > Move > drag it to the right a little. You should have blank space on the most left now.
• Third: right-click on the most left > Properties > make panel size 24 > make panel transparency 80% > OK.
• Fourth: right-click on the same area > Add to Panel > find applet named Search for files > double-click to add it to panel > move it to the right side of panel.
• Fifth: move everything on panel to its right place > lock everything.
• Sixth: start MATE Tweak and save panel layout as Supertino.

Step 7: set plank theme

The Plank theme is Madmac. Download it from https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1208015/. Extract it and copy the theme folder into ~/.local/share/plank/themes/. Enable it by Ctrl+right-click on Plank > Preferences > set theme: madmac.

Step 8: icons on desktop

Unlike GNOME, MATE permits icons on desktop by default. Simply use start menu and drag-and-drop or Alt+F2 and drag-and-drop the icon.

Finalize everything

Up to this point, you should have at least two theme folders in two folders, namely OS-X-Yosemite-1.0.1 under ~/.themes and MacOSX under ~/.icons. Under the former, you should see a gtk-3.0 folder and also metacity-1 folder. Those are the folders of your Controls and Window borders. See picture below.

Final result

This is how your MATE desktop should look like after doing all instructions:

Closing words

That's all. I am more satisfied with this one compared to the previous GNOME+McMojave one. The top panel is just lovely with its size and trasparency, not to mention we can put global menu on it. The bottom dock size, zoom animation, and translucency are just perfect in my opinion. This one is closer to the the first KDE+MojaveCT one. I wish this satisfies you as well. However, indeed I let several empty spaces for you to make awesome stuffs by your own creativity. See you in the next customization tutorial!


This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.