Hello Linux Geeksters. As I have already written a few times already, Canonical’s Alan Pope and Martin Wimpress, one of the leading MATE developers have been working a lot at Ubuntu MATE Remix, a Ubuntu spin which uses Mate as the default desktop environment.
Not long after the developers have posted some screenshots of Ubuntu Mate Remix running inside Virtualbox, an early alpha version of Ubuntu MATE Remix 14.10 has been made available for download, for both 32 bit and 64 bit CPU architectures, available as Live DVD or Live USB. For now, the ISO images do not work on UEFI computers.
Ubuntu Mate REMIX Alpha 1 uses MATE 1.8.1 as the default desktop environment (a version of Mate 1.8 customized for Ubuntu 14.10) and runs on Kernel 3.15.
Ubuntu MATE Remix is not an official Canonical project, but a community-driven one and it is not yet an official Ubuntu flavor.
Mark Shuttleworth is very delighted about this project:
“Delighted to see MATE arriving as an official desktop remix in Ubuntu; for those of you who like the old stuff, now on crisp new foundations.”
Until Ubuntu MATE Remix 14.04 get a more stable version, MATE 1.8 can be installed on Ubuntu 14.04 via the Mate Repository. Follow the instructions exactly, in order to get a successful installation.
$ echo "deb http://repo.mate-desktop.org/archive/1.8/ubuntu trusty main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mate-desktop.list
$ wget -qO - http://mirror1.mate-desktop.org/debian/mate-archive-keyring.gpg | sudo apt-key add -
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install mate-core mate-desktop-environment mate-notification-daemon