MATE
Version: 1.18 Web: https://mate-desktop.org
The world of Linux desktop environments has been a matter of passionate discussion and fierce online battle for decades, yet there is one thing that didn’t change dramatically over the years. We are alluding, of course, to MATE, a successor to the once-famous and widely used GNOME 2 desktop. If we cast an eye back a few years, we see GNOME 2 as a standard desktop for the first Fedora Core releases, Novell Enterprise Linux, OpenSolaris and more, with a focus on enterprise-class Unix-based desktops. The curious bit is that MATE looks and behaves exactly the same as GNOME 2, offering pleasant updates and support that bring it on par with other modern desktops. It may be less demanding but it is no less functional and provides a good choice for those who want their computer hardware to do some work rather than fancy desktop effects, while avoiding the slightly older and cut down feel of the likes of LXDE.
Mate 1.18 was released after nearly half a year of hard work since the 1.16 version, and it features quite a lot of changes that are worth highlighting. Finally, in this release the MATE developers got rid of the historic (yet still widely used) GTK2 library and switched entirely to GTK3. This means not only compatibility with the latest fancy GTK themes, but also more easy-tomaintain code going forward.
The file manager app, Caja, comes with a copy queue and pausing and also with new notifications for safe unmounting of external drives. The Atril document viewer handles PDF files in a more lively fashion than ever, the MATE calculator is again in the default desktop offering and the Engrampa archive manager now opens ZIP archives that pretend to be custom formats, such a WAR and EAR.
This new MATE release has of course received a multitude of smaller changes here and there, and you really need to start using this desktop in order to benefit from the latest improvements they’ve made. Many new features involve a more intensive use of extra mouse buttons and scrolling, so you can be sure that MATE devs do care about your productivity.
“In this release MATE got rid of the historic (yet widely used) GTK2 library.”