MATE Blog

I don't know if you are DE shopping, but I've been very happy for the past few years with the MATE Desktop Environment, which "...is the continuation of GNOME 2. It provides an intuitive and attractive desktop environment using traditional metaphors for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems." https://mate-desktop.org/ Among a great number of things I really like, I will mention that Caja, the MATE version of GNOME 2's Nautilus file manager, can still be switched to spatial mode. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_file_manager Generally speaking, I too really liked GNOME 2.32 and its predecessors, and, as far as I'm concerned, MATE is as it describes itself. EDIT: Wording mistake.

> Is there a WM out there that can do the basic quality-of-life functions of today's DEs? I'd love a simple, opinionated WM that takes the features we know are useful today (workspaces, expo mode, sensible file manager layouts, system trays) and gives them a color-adjustable window theme inspired by 90's aesthetics, with minimal compositing that can run fast on hardware as minimal as a prototype RISC-V board. Or really, what we need is a truly minimal DE. Something that doesn't care about GTK or Qt or Kvantum, and stays lean. Mate desktop environment in my opinion comes closest to the simplicity of the Windows 95/GNOME 2 environments of the old: https://mate-desktop.org/. Not sure how hardware-frugal it is since maintaining it under GTK 2 was not feasible and it's now developed against GTK 3 (with still maintaining the look and feel of GNOME 2).

These days, I am really impressed by the MATE desktop environment: https://mate-desktop.org/ It does the stuff that you need without excess weight, the look and feel is flexible enough that you can make it look like other systems if you prefer, and the small development team consistently put out new releases to fix and refine it without any drama. AWS use it for their Linux cloud-based desktop service, probably for these reasons. Ubuntu MATE is a great showcase for what can be done with MATE. It's arguably more user-friendly than the main Ubuntu, with the MATE desktop and quick-start features like a well-curated software selector. https://ubuntu-mate.org/

MATE (https://mate-desktop.org/) is the modern, supported, version of Gnome2. It's a great desktop environment and all your old nautilus scripts will work with just a s/nautilus/caja/ regex replacement.

I actually just went back to Linux after 11 years of macOS and I can't say Gnome 3 does it for me either. 10.6 was my favorite version of OS X and I think that OS has been going mostly downhill from there. When switching I realized I've been spoiled with well thought out design and UX, but I must say I really enjoy the simplicity and polish of MATE DE[1]. It's sort of like traveling back to a time when a desktop was a desktop (oh boy, am I getting old) and not a shopping mall were I'm supposed to buy stuff and have my habits tracked and measured. [1] http://mate-desktop.org/

Unity and gnome-shell might be OK on a netbook. Or a notebook. Or maybe on a single monitor desktop. For a triplehead setup this concept is just not bearable. I think this really bad design-decision goes back to the days when there was this "Linux the great netbook / eee-PC OS hype". The good thing is: Nobody is forced to use this . There is Mate (http://mate-desktop.org/), or KDE, or XFCE, or ... The only thing that I find a bit pity, is that so many resources are spent on Gnome3 and Unity :-/

MATE was forked around the time GNOME 3 was released and is still going. https://mate-desktop.org Some people consider Cinnamon to be a GNOME 2 spiritual successor while still using a lot of GNOME 3 stuff under the hood. https://projects.linuxmint.com/cinnamon/

The closest I know of is Blue95. I have only run the live environment but it worked pretty well and was impressive. "Blue95 is a modern and lightweight desktop experience that is reminiscent of a bygone era of computing. Based on Fedora Atomic Xfce with the Chicago95 theme." https://github.com/winblues/blue95 Depending on your chosen desktop and era, there are also things like TDE (trinity desktop environment) a fork (or spiritual successor) of the KDE 3.x environment: https://www.trinitydesktop.org/media/screenshots/large/tde3.png And if you like Gnome 2.x, there's MATE: https://mate-desktop.org/

Happy Birthday, MATE . (<https://mate-desktop.org>) What is called "GNOME" today is something else.

GNOME 2 was perfect. I use the spiritual sucessor MATE wherever it’s possible. It’s not perfect and arguably “boring” but there is really something to it https://mate-desktop.org/ On a side note a similar project exist for KDE 3. Trinity Desktop https://www.trinitydesktop.org/ And on a second mildly related side note: /r/linux had a thread about a modern (2009) OpenSuse spin with KDE 2 a few months ago. It was released as an april’s fools joke but the ISO file totally disappeared from the internet. Or at least the sub couldn’t find it (and the archive.org mirror is corrupted) https://blogs.kde.org/2009/04/01/new-kde-live-cd-release-brings-back-d… Maybe someone here have it? :)

Look instead at MATE's homepage: https://mate-desktop.org/ Or their screenshots. For Ubuntu MATE, select "Traditional" in your link's step 1. You can also look at the final screenshot of https://learnubuntumate.weebly.com/traditional-menu.html Sure, MATE has evolved to give more options, and distros seem to like defaulting its look to something non-traditional, but the traditional look is still very GNOME2 and very much alive. I've got an old desktop from 2009 that's run Gentoo the whole time , I never upgraded to GNOME3, but I did switch to MATE when it came out, and haven't had to mess with it since apart from trying out different icon sets or other small theme changes. It looks basically the same as ever, even compared to my old laptop screenshots from 2007 -- I still have my wobbly windows from Compiz (fka Beryl) too.

When you say "easy to use" are you talking mostly about the desktop UX? Because there are lot of desktops to choose from for Linux. Have you tried MATE[1] or Budgie from Solus[2]? They're both quite nice in different ways [1]: https://mate-desktop.org/ [2]: https://getsol.us/home/

You should give Mate a try then [1]. It's essentially Gnome 2 but actively maintained. [1] https://mate-desktop.org/

FWIW, I switched to MATE[1] instead of GNOME 3 after GNOME 2. It's a fork of GNOME 2 that retains the look and feel of GNOME 2, and thus far, I've been fairly pleased with it. [1]: https://mate-desktop.org/

Gnome 2 has been forked into Mate. https://mate-desktop.org/

This is off-topic, but IMO the biggest failure of GNOME 3 is that it called itself GNOME 3. Sure it was mostly the same community working on a similar project. But they could have used a new name, and made it a separate offering! GNOME2 had basically completed its mission. It was stable and consistent and had many happy users. But when a "GNOME 3" exists, people are force-upgraded. Except it feels more like a separate product than an "upgrade". In fact GNOME 2 lives on but strangely that project had to re-brand itself as MATE: http://mate-desktop.org/. Gtk2 and GNOME 2 did the same thing to all the happy users of GNOME1/Gtk1.2. It was a community upheaval with big consequences. I think your Gtk2/Gtk3 gripe is the same. If the goals are different enough, let's please let the projects live happily in parallel.

You can use the Mate Desktop Environment [1], it's pretty close to Gnome 2. [1] https://mate-desktop.org/

I enjoyed Gnome 2 as well, back on Debian 5 and 6. Did you try MATE (http://mate-desktop.org/)? It's an active fork of Gnome 2.

Using MATE [1] I don't have this problem at all. 1: http://mate-desktop.org/

Look into the MATE Desktop Environment. [1] "MATE is a fork of GNOME 2. It provides an intuitive and attractive desktop environment using traditional metaphors for Linux…" [1] http://mate-desktop.org/

I've been using MATE on my newest box. It's a gnome2 fork focused on preserving the old-way of doing things. http://mate-desktop.org/ I've only been using it for 30 hours, but so far it's working quite well and isn't getting in my way.

There's a fork of Gnome 2 http://mate-desktop.org/ works very well.

http://mate-desktop.org probably won't go all "tablet" any time soon.

Have you looked at MATE? https://mate-desktop.org/

You'd probably like MATE then: https://mate-desktop.org/

Or perhaps http://mate-desktop.org/

I think you mean http://mate-desktop.org/

http://mate-desktop.org/ is a GNOME fork.

- http://linuxmint.com/ - http://mate-desktop.org/

The future of GNOME: http://mate-desktop.org/