I decided to take Ubuntu MATE 22.04 LTS for a Spin

Ubuntu MATE is a distribution of Linux that shares its foundation with Ubuntu itself, but defaults to the MATE desktop environment instead of GNOME. I decided to check out the latest release (22.04 LTS) on my Thinkpad X1 Carbon, but unfortunately things didn't quite go according to plan...

*LEARN LINUX TV - YOUR HOME FOR LINUX-RELATED FUN AND LEARNING!*

*🎓 BRAND NEW UDEMY COURSES AVAILABLE!*
Check out my new courses on Udemy and learn something new!

*🐧 SUPPORT LINUX LEARNING!*
_Note: Royalties and/or commission is earned from each of the above links_

*⏰ TIME CODES*
00:00 - Intro
01:27 - Linode
02:58 - Installation
03:42 - Theming, Look and feel
05:38 - Software selection and features
08:51 - Downsides
14:30 - Final thoughts

*Full Courses from Learn Linux TV*

*🌐 LEARN LINUX TV ON THE WEB*

*⚠️ DISCLAIMER*
Learn Linux TV provides technical content that will hopefully be helpful to you and teach you something new. However, this content is provided without any warranty (expressed or implied). Learn Linux TV is not responsible for any damages that may arise from any use of this content. Always make sure you have written permission before working with any infrastructure and that you are compliant with all company rules, change control procedures, and local laws.

#Linux #Ubuntu #OSReview

[maneeshpatel]

I've been running MATE (currently version 1.24.1) in Debian (currently version 11) for the last 13 years on a server running continuously. Extremely stable. I've had maybe three crashes over the course of those 13 years.

[vid]

Jay,

I have used Ubuntu Mate quite a bit, almost all of the display issues/glitches I encountered are due to the Window Manager Compositor and animations being enabled (I'm not a fan of animations).

To solve these video glitches in "Mate Tweak" under Windows I turned off animations and changed my Windows Manager to Marco (built-in: Xpresent) and it solved the video glitches. Now I do not have a 4K monitor, just a couple of dual 1080P 24 inch monitors.

If you having video glitches I would recommend taking a look at these settings as they "may" work out for you as they did for me in particular the Windows managers as from my experience. "Animations" when enabled in Mate are almost guaranteed to glitch any display from my experience, its not a question of "will it", more like a matter of when, and almost 100% guaranteed if you undock/dock unless you turn off animations.

[dweiss]

People say not to install the first iteration of a new release. Wait for the .1 update. That's what I'll be doing, waiting for 22.04.1 before upgrading from 20.04.5. I'm glad the quirks didn't make you write the whole distribution off. I've enjoyed Ubuntu MATE for years. I thought about migrating to some other distribution but this one works for me. It is responsive and stable.

[timlucas]

Hello Jay, from another migraine sufferer. Many people who don't get them just don't seem to appreciate that they are not 'just' a headache! I enjoyed your video and, while I have not tried out Ubuntu Mate, I had a slew of problems with the Kubuntu 22.04. With an AMD processor and GPU, I was not expecting many issues, but things weren't working right from get-go, with error messages and crashes mere minutes after installation. I thought it was a real shame, as I really hoped that Ubuntu would provide the solid KDE experience I required. My daily driver needs to work out the box with the minimum of fuss, so I had to quickly move on. I look forward to the day when you revisit one of the Ubuntu flavours and report that the distro is back to being reliable.

[Jim.Gregory]

I've been running Ubuntu Mate on older hardware for a few years now without any major issues. It's fast and lightweight and performs very well for me.

[noam]

I just upgraded to 22.04, and really disliked gnome 42. I remembered mate, and that's far better for me.

I love all the little panel applets! There were many useful ones. It's so easy to configure, I showed family how to configure to the heart's pleasure. The interface is so familiar, it's a dream.

There are bugs, but gnome 42 for me was death by a thousand cuts. The upgrade left me unable to get the panel to be configurable.

The upgrade also caused me ssh issues, which were solved by creating new credentials.

I decided that when the LTS runs out, I'm thinking about hopping to manjaro. Which I put on a virtual machine, and love!

[robertcromwell]

I have been using Ubuntu mate 22.04 on a Raspberry Pi 4 8G. Like it very well so far.

[raxelgrande]

We have to consider that Mate is a quite smaller desktop compared to KDE or Gnome, for how well it runs i can't complain!
Gnome is always more buggy for me.

[javabeanz]

I love Mate', but as you pointed out at the start of the video, it has some annoying little glitches, making it hard to daily drive. If those quirks were fixed, it would be an excellent daily driver. For now, I have switched to Mint's Cinnamon Desktop.

[rocketman]

Finally i hear someone pronounce Ubuntu correctly, 99% of people pronounce it wrong

[nevoyu]

It saddens me that mate, lxqt, and even xfce kinda fall apart once a second monitor is applied.
Hopefully the transition to wayland fixes this.

[orasinius]

I’m not sure why you had this issue?
I’m using Lenovo T470s with dock station connected to 32” dual monitors
Everything works perfectly .
I did use Ubuntu mint and always after updates had issues .
I personally would recommend Ubuntu mate
Specially for hardware which not very new
Since I installed it have not had any issues compared to Ubuntu mint .

Maybe the resolution issues that you had are related to the latest hardware drivers.

[anga]

i use ubuntu mate on my alienware laptop which i bought about 2 years ago, it runs very well for me. of course it is a little quirky but worth putting up with. after all, its not like i have to pay a fortune to use it. now that nvidia has open sourced their drivers, those display issues might change. for everyone else not using nvidia graphics, it will work well with linux friendly hardware

[anya_adora]

It's sad to see these issues with MATE on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. I really enjoyed MATE years ago on LMDE and Linux Mint, LMDE was usually my top choice but both worked well. Thanks for showing us this. It's interesting to see even though i love KDE Neon these days and rarely have any issues with anything.

[jantrs]

Since 2020, my go-to distro was Ubuntu Mate. It was a good blend of low-impact UI, with a lot of configuration possibilities. I used the Redmond setting. U.Mate 20.04 performed well on powerful and older computers alike, I sometimes installed for friends.
When I tested Ubuntu Mate 22.04 LTS, I was disappointed. These 3 flaws struck me:
1. In the Redmond setting, the Advanced Mate Menu was replaced by the Brisk Menu. But that didn't offer the same possibilities as the AMM. E.g. I noticed that there is no easy way, using the Brisk menu, to add shortcuts to programs to the Redmond layout panel. Why replace something with an less-capable component?
2. Did you know you can't add new users to an existing install of U.Mate 22.04? The module to add users is just missing. I'm curious about the reasoning behind that.
3. No login control. The login screen of Ubuntu Mate 22.04 is now fixed and un-changeable. You can't change the background any more, you can't let people in without password, and you can't hide specific users. All this you could do with the 20.04 old 'Login Window'.
The above 3 examples have become breaking points for me. I realise that this may seem petty. 1 & 2 are relatively easy to fix, but why?
So despite that I worked U.Mate 20.04 with pleasure, I won't work on 22.04 LTS anymore. My daily driver will become Ubuntu, for low-end machines I'll use Xubuntu.
I hope that distro-makers realise that there are more and more people that just want to use the distribution they offer, nothing more. Changes/flaws like these could put people off, chase them away towards another distro, or make them return to Windows/Mac where they came from.

[johngouin]

I got a headache just listening to the issues that you had to deal with. You made a solid point in how risky it would be to deploy this in a corporate environment.

[luisbperez]

Ubuntu Mate is one of my favorite distros for my Raspberry Pi 400 due to the memory constraints of the Pi400. The only add-on to customize it is the wallpaper. There are tons of awesome wallpapers made by the Ubuntu Mate community. I do a lot of research and writing, so on my 1440P monitor, I have Firefox open along with LibreOffice Writer. I have a 64Gb USB thumb drive. My other Raspberry Pi is an 8Gb that runs Pop OS on an Argon Case with a 240 Gb M.2. I use both as my primary desktop PCs.

[dktol]

You didn't say much about your hardware, other than you used multiple displays and one of them was 4k. What GPU were you using - Intel, AMD, Nvidia? If Nvidia, did you use the proprietary drivers or the open source nouveau drivers? I've been using 22.04 Mate with either a AMD Rx580 or a low end Nvidia GT710 (with nouveau driver) and haven't experienced any major display glitches yet, but then I haven't done much yet with multiple monitors and mine are only 2k. I have experienced the occasional marco crash - annoying but fairly rare.

[derekr]

I have been testing out the new Ubuntu Unity version and find it to be better than the Mate version I tried out originally. Like you I had display problems with Mate but the Unity version is working nicely on my old HP laptop.

[AquariusTurtle]

Love the Mister Rogers sticker on the laptop. He was a deeply religious Christian evangelist and the show was a practical implementation of that moral framework.