How To Install Mate 1.4 On Ubuntu 12.10/12.04/11.10

In this tutorial we will help you install the Mate 1.4.0 desktop environment on Ubuntu 12.10/12.04/11.10. If you want to see what has been improved or fixed in this latest version of Mate, you can go here.

Mate 1.4.0 Installation

To install Mate 1.4.0 on Ubuntu 12.10/12.04/11.10 or any Ubuntu-based system, open the terminal and run the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://packages.mate-desktop.org/repo/ubuntu precise main"
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mate-archive-keyring mate-core mate-desktop-environment gdebi

After finishing the installation of Mate, log out and select Mate from the session menu, then log back in to start the Mate desktop:

Here is a screenshot of Mate 1.4.0 under Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin:

Before we finish this tutorial, there is also a bug that needs to be fixed which causes icons to disappear due to the conflict between mate-settings-daemon and gnome-settings-daemon. To fix it, edit /etc/xdg/autostart/mate-settings-daemon.desktop with this command:

sudo pluma /etc/xdg/autostart/mate-settings-daemon.desktop

Replace now this line:

Exec=/usr/bin/mate-settings-daemon

with this one:

Exec=bash -c "/usr/bin/mate-settings-daemon --no-daemon &"

Save and exit, then edit /etc/xdg/autostart/gnome-settings-daemon.desktop with this command:

sudo pluma /etc/xdg/autostart/gnome-settings-daemon.desktop

Replace now all text inside this file with the following:

#!/usr/bin/env xdg-open

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=MATE Settings Daemon
Exec=/usr/bin/mate-settings-daemon
OnlyShowIn=MATE;Unity;
NoDisplay=true
X-GNOME-Autostart-Phase=Initialization
X-GNOME-Autostart-Notify=true
X-GNOME-AutoRestart=true
X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain=gnome-settings-daemon

Save your file and restart your computer.

ROSA 2012.1 Alpha

Konstantin Kochereshkin has announced the availability of the first alpha build of ROSA 2012.1 "Desktop" edition, a desktop Linux distribution originally forked from Mandriva Linux: "In this alpha release the main emphasis was made on libraries and core system software. We have successfully rebuilt packages from the main repository with new libraries and adopted our package base to RPM 5.4.x requirements. Versions of system components included in the alpha release: RPM 5.4.9, GCC 4.7 Linaro, glibc 2.15, KDE 4.9.0, Perl 5.14, Linux kernel 3.5.1, systemd 189, Qt 4.8.2, GTK+ 3.4.4, FFmpeg 0.11.1, PHP 5.4.6. Currently GRUB 0.97 is used as bootloader, but it will be replaced with GRUB 2 at next stages of ROSA Desktop 2012 development. Note: this alpha release only supports KDE 4!" Read the complete release announcement for more details and relevant links. Download: ROSA.2012.1.Alpha.i586.iso (1,484MB, MD5), ROSA.2012.1.Alpha.x86_64.iso (1,495MB, MD5).

Slackware Linux 14.0 RC4

Release candidate four for Slackware Linux 14.0 is out: "Well, we fixed a lot of bugs and took some upgrades that we pretty much needed to take since they were important bug and/or security fixes, so it looks like we'll need to have a 14.0 release candidate 4 and another (last?) round of testing. Hopefully the fourth time is the charm!" One of the critical security patches were applied to glibc: "Patched multiple integer overflows in the strtod, strtof, strtold, and strtod_l functions in stdlib in the GNU C Library allow local users to cause a denial of service (application crash) and possibly execute arbitrary code via a long string, which triggers a stack-based buffer overflow." See the distribution's changelog for a full list of changes. Download links to the daily unofficial DVD installation images built by Eric Hameleers: slackware-current-install-dvd.iso (2,320MB, MD5), slackware64-current-install-dvd.iso (2,274MB, MD5).