 So a few days on the podcast Tyler and I were talking about the best Linux desktops And one of the desktops that we were talking about was mate and our comments there kind of float around the idea that not a lot of people actually use mate and We were both kind of confused by this because from what we both remembered It was actually a pretty good desktop environment So what I thought I would do today is actually take a look at mate and ask the question Should you give it a try because it does actually Exist so let's go ahead and take a look at mate So here we have Ubuntu mate and I chose this version for good reason because this is the flagship distro for mate the main developer who does mate development is Also the maintainer or at least the chief maintainer of Ubuntu mate So all of the cool features that mate has are Integrated the best inside of Ubuntu mate Whereas if you install this on like Arch or Fedora or some other distro You're gonna find that a lot of the features that are built into Ubuntu mate are missing So things like the mate twig tool usually aren't included in the mate packages on other distros Same thing with the boutique, which is the software center stuff like that Now the first thing we should talk about is look-and-feel because the look-and-feel of mate is something that is going to be very Polarizing for a lot of people and the reason why I say that is because the reason why mate exists is because the developers at the time Preferred the look of GNOME 2 when GNOME 3 was developed and released So if you haven't been around Linux for all that long You'll probably not know that GNOME 3 was a major departure from what GNOME had looked like for a long time And well, this is what GNOME looked like for a long time This is the GNOME 2 paradigm and you have two bars on the screen one at the top one at the bottom and It's something that from a workflow perspective a lot of people got really used to and when GNOME 3 came out and they hid the icons away and the customization was all gone and it was slower than sin and it was not very good the Development team or at least a several developers got together and decided to fork GNOME 2 and come up with mate And that's kind of the story behind it in a brief few words So when you talk about look-and-feel You're going to expect something that is a little bit older and while I'm not saying that the look-and-feel is Out of date what I am saying is that you can expect this to be a consistent look-and-feel for probably the entire time Mate exists because they have chosen this look for a reason now one of the things that makes mate cool specifically Ubuntu mate is that despite this being the paradigm that they've chosen this look and feel is what they've chosen they have Provided you a tool to change that layout if you prefer something different So if you open up the menu here and search for mate tweak you'll find this application here and Basically what this application does is it gives you a few extra options for customization and stuff like that But the cool thing is that it allows you to choose between different panel layouts So the default one on mate is called contemporary But they have several other options So you could try Cupertino and then it'll bring up this option here and this is what Cupertino looks like It's more of a Mac like experience you can also choose familiar and that looks like this now Personally, I don't see that much of a difference between that and the contemporary look But there are a few things that are a little bit different the top panel is a little bit bigger Some of the applets are in different places things like that They also have one here called mutiny and as you might expect this looks like unity now You saw the error that came up that happens every once in a while when you switch between these layouts You can reload the layout if you want to and have those errors go away But this is the layout you'd use if you were used to the unity desktop There's also one here for pantheon, which is also similar to the Cupertino one So this is more elementary OS, but it's still very Mac like then there is Redmond and as you might expect This is very much a Windows like experience. So you have a start menu down here at the bottom There's no extra bar up the top. That's a windows version and then you have traditional Which is a even more gnomed to like experience So you have the two bars again and you have the Old style menu system up here instead of the Whisker menu or whatever that's called where it's a more modern menu system The coolest aspect of this however is that you can save your own layout So if you were to create a panel structure where the panel is on the left hand side Let's just say you created that and you have all of your Applets and stuff like that and the places where you want them and you have the menu where you want it you can Save that layout as your own and then switch away from it come back to it You can have several different layouts if you prefer to change it up That is really freaking cool because it's definitely not something you'll see In basically any other desktop environment Another area that mate does really well in is customization in terms of themes So out of the box you actually get a few really excellent themes to try out and use and when you select a theme It actually has like a packaging effect where when you change the theme it changes Everything except for like the wallpaper. So if we choose this one here You'll see that not only do the Applications and the bars change, but if we go into the file manager, which is called kaha. You will also see that the Folders and icons have changed. So let me actually change that icon again and you'll see that the icon theme has changed And you can scroll down here and see that there are several other themes. So if we choose say The purple one they'd become purple now really what all this is doing is allowing you to choose Accent colors and that is a neat thing to do. I don't know why they call them separate themes It seems like it'd just be easier to come up with a Accent color system instead of having several different themes But this is the way they've chosen to do it now Just like with the panel layout system you can come up with your own theme combination So you can choose different icon packs different themes just like that and because this uses gtk3 You can use pretty much any gtk3 Thing that you find online and they don't hide this behind any genom tweaks or anything This is part of the system preferences. So you can get into this anytime you want You don't have to worry about installing anything extra They also make it really easy to install those new themes by being able to have an install button right here Which will allow you to select the file and then it'll install it right for you Which is really nice another nice little tweak that they've added is an application that allows you to Completely customize how your menu system works So just no matter which menu system you're using whether it's this one or the whisker menu or whatever it's called This application lets you change what applications are shown what categories they are how they're ordered Whether or not they have separators in them, you can change the favorites things like that All that stuff can be done from this application and while this isn't unique to mate It is definitely something that is not that common Now the software boutique is unique to ubuntu mate You can get it on other distros if you want, but it is specifically built for this version of mate Because it pulls from the ubuntu repose So if you're using another distribution that is based on ubuntu The software boutique will probably work pretty well for you if you're on arch It probably would not work at all as far as i'm aware. I'm actually not sure about that But for sure it's definitely built for ubuntu mate And one of the things that's cool about it is that not only does it look really nice But it just functions really well. So you can add different repositories to it You can do a bunch of searches just like you would expect to be able to do It's really well categorized as well So you're not going to have the problem like linux mint has where All of their applications are kind of bifurcated and that they show multiple entries of each application based on where they're coming from So if you search for thunderbird in linux mint, you'd see three applications called thunderbird All of them are exactly the same. They just come from different places You don't have that problem here and while this isn't the fullest features like not everything in the ubuntu repositories is listed here The things that are are well done. So you can click on the details and it'll give you some details of the Application you're looking to download in addition to the details on the applications that are appropriate to do so They do also show you screenshots. So one of the things that I really enjoy about the software boutique Is that the screenshots that are here Can actually be made bigger. So in a lot of software front ends that have screenshots, they're not clickable they just are there and Most of the time that means that the screenshots are really small and are basically useless with this You can see the full size of the screenshot. It just pops up now That's not resizable or anything like that But that's about as big as it's ever going to need to be And you can see the whole thing which is really nice Now the last thing that I want to talk about in terms of the software boutique is that you can add a Whole bunch of apps to a list and then install them all one right after another now That's not something that you can do in any other software front end besides a panax So if you've ever used manjaro, you can select a whole bunch of applications and then have it install them Like in a queue you can also do that here with the software boutique You can add things to the queue and then it will install them one right after another And all you have to do is click the install button and you as you can see now I have two things here right in the queue and then it would just apply the changes Just like you'd see in pamac, which is like I said, this is that's really cool It's not something that you see in any other Software front end in terms of GUI's and stuff like that now you can obviously do that in the command line really easily But the GUI front end managers usually don't have that feature So at the end of the day mate is an amazing desktop I really do enjoy and I always kind of have I've had some issues When it comes to it running on my hardware for some reason when I first switched to Linux I really liked mate and I used it for a while But then after a bit of using it it just stopped running on my computer now I've switched to computer since then and I haven't used mate since then So I don't know if they fixed that or not or if it was just that computer But the point is is that I really enjoy Mate and I have This thing where dark modes are a great thing like I really enjoy dark modes And I think that mate has one of the best dark modes that you can find at any Linux distro It's just kind of out of this world. You look at this and it's just really well put together Very consistent And the combination of some of the colors that they've chosen are just really really good So I think that out of all the desktop environments that I've tried mate is still one of my favorites And I really wish it was more popular because I think a lot of people would enjoy it more now. Obviously There are some downsides. So like I said at the beginning mate does have A future problem In that it's always going to look like this. Okay, and that's okay Like the developers have chosen Their desktop environment to look like this and that's the way it's always going to stay because of the genesis of mate They're kind of stuck in that, you know, I'm too paradigm That's basically the way it's going to look forever more and if you like that kind of thing You're going to be very very happy with this look and feel even With a buntu mate where they give you some options for different panel layouts The default mate experience is going to remain the same throughout its life cycle for however long it exists You're never going to be having that feeling in the back of your mind where they might be doing a visual refresh Sometimes soon and you just have to wait for it. So if you use gnom, you know that eventually gnom is going to do a redesign That's the way gnom has worked forever Now it might take 10 years or something like that Eventually gnom 40 and the 40 series is going to turn into the 50 series or whatever they call it next, you know And usually that will come with a major redesign like the most recent one in gnom 40 was a pretty big redesign of gnom Still had a lot of the same paradigm, but it was a lot of new features a lot of different visual Changes mate is not ever going to probably do that without significantly changing their mission statement Which is to maintain the gnom to paradigm and like I said, there's nothing really wrong with that It's just you have to kind of know that going in that this is what you're getting and I think that that is Again, an okay thing. It's just something you got to keep in mind Now that's one of the reasons why I recommend if you're going to use mate to use a buntu mate because It comes with mate tweak right out of the box It comes with all those panel layouts for you already right out of the box And you can use any of those that you want now that doesn't mean you can't get mate tweak on other distros You can you can download that and have it work just fine But the preconfigured panel layouts are as far as I know Exclusive to a buntu mate. So if you want those things, this is the distro that you want to choose on it Plus because the developer of a buntu mate and mate itself are the same person All of the new exciting features usually come to a buntu mate first all of the Development cycles for mate are pretty much lined up with a buntu itself. So when the Interim a buntu releases come out. Usually that's when a new mate releases released now Sometimes there are some gaps in between there, but for the most part that seems to be true So that is mate. I personally think like I said, it's a very very good distro with one of the best dark themes You can find and if you like the two-bar panel layout or any of the others that buntu mate kind of gives you the Look and feel of mate is still really really good And I find myself again wishing that it was a little bit more popular So if you have thoughts on mate, you can leave those in the comment section below I'd love to hear from you if you want to follow me on twitter You can do so at linuxcast. You can follow me on mastodon or odyssey Those links will be in the video description just below the like button If you could possibly hit the like button, I really appreciate it does So premiumly help the channel The youtube algorithm just relies on that kind of stuff. It eats it up like a junkie does So hit that like button. 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