Ubuntu MATE 17.10 Alpha 2 released with reconfigurable panel layouts

Years ago, someone has told that Change is the only constant in life. Everything in this universe keeps on changing to cope with it's surrounding. Adhering to this universal law, Ubuntu MATE team had conducted a survey to see whether it is  right time to take a call for the change. Unfortunately it was difficult to draw a conclusion from these polls due to mixed response. Satisfying the urge for change, Ubuntu MATE team has announced availability of Ubuntu MATE 17.10 Alpha 2, second development release of upcoming Ubuntu MATE 17.10 stable release.

Mutiny (Unity like) layout in Ubuntu MATE 17.10

As the community had diverse opinions regarding the layout change, Ubuntu MATE 17.10 is shipping with default panel layout. Listening from the community, Ubuntu MATE team has incorporated easy layout switch option in MATE tweak tool. It provides following layouts

• Mutiny mimics the Unity 7 interface
• Cupertino provides something similar to macOS
• Redmond will be familiar to Windows users
• Pantheon a hybrid for long time desktop Linux users who want some modern conveniences
• Contemporary a blend of the best of the old and the sprinkle of the new
• Netbook people still use them and this layout is for them
• Traditional just like your Dad remembers it, and still the default

In order to complete these layouts, Ubuntu MATE also provides provisions for

• Global menu, a feature introduced by Unity Shell in Linux World
• Complete super key support. There has been multiple patches in mate desktop components and plugins to make the super key to work as per expectations
• Heads up display menu : You can search for applications and open them without leaving keyboard.
• App indicator applet
• MATE Tweak tools has been updated with the ability to switch between layouts.

For more details and layout previews, see original release announcement published by Ubuntu MATE team.

Solus project announced first release of Brisk Menu

Mr Joshua Strobl, communication manager at Solus project has announced release of Brisk Menu 0.1.0, a modern, efficient and clean application menu for MATE Desktop. It enables quick launch of applications with search support, and includes other session control buttons for logout, shutdown with settings button.

Though Brisk Menu is developed by Solus project, other big plEnable ayers like Ubuntu MATE has also expressed their interest in this project and has collaborated together. Currently Ubuntu MATE is using mintmenu adopted from Linux Mint and they were looking for an alternative for a while.

A preview of Brisk Menu 0.1.0 in Solus MATE Edition
CREDIT : The Solus Project

Current release of Brisk Menu is at it's early stages of development and has a long way to go to fulfill the purpose of developers behind creating such a menu. Following are some of the todo features for Brisk Menu.

• Enable launch of menu with Super/Meta/Windows/Command key.
• Enable support for translation.
• Favorite sections to pin applications
• Ability to customize general behavior of menu, for example option to toggle sidebar icons.
• Ability to customize label & icon.

The latest rolling snapshot of Solus MATE edition (2017.01.01.0) is featuring Brisk Menu. Or alternatively you can download the release snapshot from github releases.

Solus project is introducing a brisk menu in collaboration with Ubuntu MATE

The Solus project has announced their plan to introduce a brisk menu in collaboration with Ubuntu MATE. This brisk menu will be introduced as part of Solus MATE edition, a new family member of Solus project featuring MATE desktop. Soon after, this menu will be ported to upcoming Budgie Desktop 11.0.

The goal of brisk menu, which is currently being developed for MATE desktop, is to provide a slight traditional, yet fast and usable application menu. This brisk menu is inspired by Budgie Menu. Though it will be slightly fast and lightweight as it is getting developed in pure C.

The plan to introduce brisk menu was announced in solus projects this week in solus news letter. Also Mr Martin Wimpress of Ubuntu MATE project has also shared the plan for collaboration through his Google+ post.

A developer preview of brisk menu under budgie desktop.
CREDIT : Solus Project

“Ubuntu MATE have been looking to replace MATE Menu (forked from mintMenu) for sometime. It is clear the Brisk Menu, despite being in the very early stages of development, is the project that can achieve that given the quality of work coming out of the Solus project.“ - Said Martin Wimpress in his Google + post.

Meet Brisk! This is a new menu we’re developing for the MATE desktop, to provide a slightly traditional, but very fast and usable menu system. It started out inspired by the Budgie Menu but has drifted towards honouring Cardapio. And with it being written in C, it’s lightning quick.

Brisk Menu will be featured in the ISO snapshot for our Solus MATE Edition and the work done on Brisk Menu will be ported back to Budgie 11.

Additionally, we’re proud to announce that the Ubuntu MATE project has expressed enthusiasm about Brisk Menu and is helping to fund development of it, so all MATE desktop users can benefit from a fast, modern menu implementation. The Ubuntu MATE project will be integrating Brisk Menu as soon as it can replace the core functionality of MATE Menu, and will see that Brisk Menu is packaged for Debian and made available in the Debian and Ubuntu archives.

For more information and other updates from solus project see This Week in Solus 40.

Ubuntu MATE 16.10 is a solid release - Review

The cmscritic website has posted a review of recently released Ubuntu MATE 16.10, an official Ubuntu community flavor featuring rock solid MATE Desktop. In this review, different aspects of the operating system has been examined and reviewer reaches in a conclusion that, Ubuntu MATE 16.10 is a solid GNU/Linux distribution.

The Ubuntu MATE community has made significant improvement over the releases, and their work on Ubuntu MATE welcome and other components deserves appreciation. The major attraction in this release is MATE Desktop itself, which can be configured to any  extend to match with users requirements.

Despite of some odd errors, for example error occured during panel switch, Ubuntu MATE 16.10 is a solid distribution which is worth for trying if you are looking for a rock solid desktop experience. However, considering the fact Ubuntu 16.10 - core and community flavors - are short term releases and will be supported for only 9 months, it is not reccomened to update to this release if you are already using 16.04 release and not crazy to explore new features and updated packages.

With the recent release of 16.10, I decided to do an Ubuntu 16.10 MATE Review and take a look at the changes from a user perspective to see how well it performs. I'll also be investigating whether it's a worthy upgrade, keeping in mind of course that the end of life for this (and other Ubuntu 16.10 variants) is 9 months, so it's certainly not something you'd want to move to if you are looking for a long term support release. In those instances, stick with the 16.04 or 14.04 releases.

Ubuntu MATE does the desktop justice in my mind; it's well laid out, easy to use and feels very usable. They also, in my mind, have nailed the new user experience with the excellent and well constructed Welcome app which launches at first boot. I'm going to quickly delve into the Welcome app for a moment because even though it's not exclusive to the 16.10 release, if you aren't familiar with Ubuntu MATE and are reading this, you may find this interesting.

You can read complete review in csmcritic website.

Ubuntu MATE 16.10 released with MATE Desktop 1.16.0

The Ubuntu MATE team has announced release of Ubuntu MATE 16.10, latest stable release of official Ubuntu community flavor featuring MATE desktop. This release includes several updated packages and improvements.

Major highlight in this release is availability of MATE desktop 1.16 which completely compiled using GTK 3.x libraries. Ubuntu MATE is the first distribution to offer completely GTK 3.x ported mate desktop. Most of the packages in Ubuntu MATE is compiled using Gtk 3.20 and the theming issues happened during migration process was rectified to provide undisturbed experience to users.

Other changes since release of Ubuntu MATE 16.10 beta 2 can be summarized as:

• Upgraded to MATE Desktop 1.16.0
  • The entire MATE Desktop suite has been upgraded to MATE Desktop 1.16.0
  • Many, many, bug fixes.
  • Translation updates.
• Upgraded Ubuntu MATE Artwork 16.10.9
  • Fix Firefox download progress bars. (LP: #1630224)
  • Fix Unlock button for Time and Date Settings. (LP: #1630910)
  • Fix Back/Forward navigation buttons in Yelp. (LP: #1624574)
  • Fix Firefox Search/Location entry box borders. (LP: #1624738)
  • Fix Firefox menu items.
  • Fix Advanced Menu themes to use flat elements. (LP: #1630366, #1624755)
  • Fix OSD colors. (LP: #1630538)
  • Fix LibreOffice toolbars and theme. (LP: #1624571, #1550990)
  • Fix symbolic icons for GtkExpander.
  • Fix Transmission progress bars. (LP: #1624565)
  • Fix Indicator Applet on transparent panels. (LP: #1598159)
• Upgraded to Ubuntu MATE Welcome 16.10.10
  • Correct description for Adobe Flash. (LP: #1630266)
  • Add keyboard navigation support. (LP: #1616203)
  • Fix Getting Started sections not re-closing. (LP: #1626909)
  • Fix broken images in bulk queue. (LP: #1626896)
  • Fix notifications for bulk queue operations. (LP: #1626899)
  • Fix “Upgrade Installed Packages” button. (LP: #1626907)
  • Fix inoperable introduction links.
  • Fix Getting Started hints not appearing.
  • Hide “open at login” checkbox for live and guest sessions.
  • Remove ocenaudio. (LP: #1613410)
  • Remove duplicate navigation buttons.
  • Many other minor fixes and refinements.
• Upgraded to MATE Dock Applet 0.75
  • Application actions now have their own popup window, which can be disabled if required.
  • Window list now appears in response to a click on an application icon when it has more than one window open.
  • Action lists and window list colours now match the panel.
  • Optional Compiz integration, to provide previews of an applications open windows.
  • Bug fixes.
• Many other bug fixes including:
  • Fixed booting PowerPC iso on PowerMac G5 7,3. (LP: #1626332)
  • Fixed LightDM Guest Session warning dialog. (LP: #1627395)
  • Fixed Display Preferences not working. (LP: #1628209)
  • Fixed changing the size of the MATE Terminal. (LP: #1615443)
  • Removed colour customisations (not supported in GTK3+) from Appearence Preferences. (LP: #1626960)
  • Removed background support (not supported in GTK3+) from Caja. (LP: #1628180)

For more details, see release announcement published in projects website.

Download Ubuntu MATE 16.10

64 BIT | 32 BIT

Final beta release is available for Ubuntu 16.10 and 6 community flavors

The Ubuntu team has proudly announced availability of Ubuntu 16.10 beta 2, second and final development beta release of upcoming stable Ubuntu 16.10 Yakety Yak. This release also includes Ubuntu cloud and server editions and also 6 other community flavors namely, Kubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, Ubuntu GNOME and Ubuntu Kylin.

Following the tradition of ubuntu releases, this release also ships greatest and latest open source technologies to provide an easy to use, highly configurable and powerful computer operating system. The team was/is working hard to fix bugs in previous development releases and to integrate new features, so that users can be offered with top class experience.

Though beta releases are expected to be almost free from severe bugs, it is not recommended to use it in production servers. This development release can be seen as a feature freeze-release prior to Ubuntu 16.10 final, which is expected to be released on 13th October 2016. Meanwhile, you may experiment with release and report bugs in launchpad to support the project in it's cause to ship a reasonably stable operating system. Before reporting the bug, you may have to ensure that, your installation is completely updated and the bug is not fixed by recent updates.

The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the final beta release of Ubuntu6.10 Desktop, Server, and Cloud products.

Codenamed "Yakkety Yak", 16.10 continues Ubuntu's proud traditionf integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into aigh-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution.  The team has been hard atork through this cycle, introducing new features and fixing bugs.

This beta release includes images from not only the Ubuntu Desktop,erver, and Cloud products, but also the Kubuntu, Lubuntu,buntu GNOME, Ubuntu Kylin, Ubuntu MATE, and Ubuntu Studiolavours.

The beta images are known to be reasonably free of showstopper CD buildr installer bugs, while representing a very recent snapshot of 16.10hat should be representative of the features intended to ship with theinal release expected on October 13th, 2016.

For more information, you can read release announcement published in Ubuntu mailing list.