MATE

Related articles
Cinnamon
Desktop environment
Display manager
GNOME
Uniform look for Qt and GTK applications
From
MATE homepage
:
The MATE Desktop Environment 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. MATE is
under active development
to add support for new technologies while preserving a traditional desktop experience.
Installation
MATE can be
installed
with one of the following:
The
mate
group contains the core desktop environment required for the standard MATE experience.
The
mate-extra
group contains additional utilities and applications that integrate well with the MATE desktop. Installing just the
mate-extra
group will not pull in the whole
mate
group via dependencies. If you want to install all MATE packages then you will need to explicitly install both groups.
The base desktop consists of
marco
,
mate-panel
and
mate-session-manager
.
MATE applications
MATE is largely composed of GNOME 2 applications and utilities, forked and renamed to avoid conflicting with their GNOME 3 counterparts. Below is a list of common GNOME applications which have been renamed in MATE.
Application
GNOME 2
MATE
Menu editor
Alacarte
mozo
File manager
Nautilus
caja
Window manager
Metacity
marco
Text editor
Gedit
pluma
Image viewer
Eye of GNOME
Eye of MATE (
eom
)
Document viewer
Evince
atril
Archive manager
File Roller
engrampa
Other applications and core components prefixed with GNOME (such as GNOME Terminal, GNOME Panel, GNOME Menus, etc.) have had the prefix changed to MATE so they become MATE Panel, MATE Menus etc.
Additional MATE packages
There are a number of other unofficial MATE applications that are contributed to and maintained by the MATE community and therefore not included in the
mate
or
mate-extra
groups.
Dock Applet
— Application dock for the MATE panel.
https://github.com/robint99/dock-applet
||
mate-applet-dock
Online Radio Applet
— A MATE panel applet to let you play your favourite online radio station with a single click.
http://www.zavedil.com/online-radio-applet/
||
mate-applet-streamer
MATE Menu
— Advanced menu for MATE Panel, a fork of MintMenu.
https://github.com/ubuntu-mate/mate-menu
||
mate-menu
AUR
MATE Tweak
— Tweak tool for MATE, a fork of mintDesktop.
https://github.com/ubuntu-mate/mate-tweak
||
mate-tweak
AUR
BriskMenu
— Modern, efficient menu for the MATE Desktop Environment from SolusOS distribution.
https://github.com/getsolus/brisk-menu
||
brisk-menu
AUR
Additional packages need to be installed to take advantage of some of Caja's advanced features - see
File manager functionality
.
Starting MATE
Choose
MATE
from the menu in a
display manager
of choice.
Alternatively, to start MATE with
startx
, append
exec mate-session
to your
~/.xinitrc
file.
Configuration
MATE can be configured with its
Control Center
application (
mate-control-center
) provided by the
mate-control-center
package. To manage some hardware, you may need to install additional tools.
Audio
ALSA
and
PulseAudio
backends are supported by the
mate-media
package.
Bluetooth
For
Bluetooth
device support, install the
blueman
package. See
Blueman
.
Networking
For configuring the network, install the
network-manager-applet
package. See
NetworkManager
.
Power
UPower backend is supported by the
mate-power-manager
package.
Printers
For configuring the printers, install the
system-config-printer
package.
Accessibility
MATE is well suited for use by individuals with sight or mobility impairment.
Install
orca
,
espeak
AUR
(Screen reader for individuals who are blind or visually impaired) and
onboard
(On-screen keyboard useful for mobility impaired users)
Before starting MATE for the first time, enter the following command as the user who needs accessibility features:
$ gsettings set org.mate.interface accessibility true
Once you start MATE, you can configure the accessibility applications via
System > Preferences > Assistive Technologies
, although if you need Orca, you will need to run it from the
Alt-F2
run window in order to start getting speech.
Notifications
Battery discharge
To disable the notification on battery discharge, run:
$ gsettings set org.mate.power-manager notify-discharging false
Brightness
See
Backlight#Kernel command-line options
.
Tips and tricks
Disabling compositing
Compositing is enabled by default. To disable it, navigate to
Look and Feel > Windows > General
in the System Preferences and tick the box alongside
Enable software compositing window manager
. Alternatively, you can run the following from the terminal:
$ gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general compositing-manager false
Disabling new window centering
By default, new windows are placed in the center. To disable centering new windows, navigate to run
Windows > Placement
in the System Preferences and tick the box alongside
Center new windows
. Alternatively, you can run the following from the terminal:
$ gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general center-new-windows false
Disabling window snapping
Window snapping is enabled by default. To disable it, navigate to run
Windows > Placement
in the System Preferences and tick the box alongside
Enable window tiling
. Alternatively, you can run the following from the terminal:
$ gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general allow-tiling false
Undecorating maximized windows
Hiding the decorations of maximized windows is possible with the use of
mate-tweak
AUR
tool; after installation navigate to
Look and Feel > MATE Tweak > Windows
in the System Preferences and enable
Undecorate maximized windows
in the
Window Behaviour
section.
Tip
If this option is grayed out and unavailable, make sure
mate-netbook
is installed.
Show or hide desktop icons
By default, MATE shows multiple icons on the desktop: the content of your desktop directory, computer, home and network directories, the trash and mounted drives. You can show or hide them individually or all at once using
gsettings
.
Hide all desktop icons
$ gsettings set org.mate.background show-desktop-icons false
Doing so may cause some graphics artifacts on secondary monitors.
Hide individual icons
Hide computer icon:
$ gsettings set org.mate.caja.desktop computer-icon-visible false
Hide user directory icon:
$ gsettings set org.mate.caja.desktop home-icon-visible false
Hide network icon:
$ gsettings set org.mate.caja.desktop network-icon-visible false
Hide trash icon:
$ gsettings set org.mate.caja.desktop trash-icon-visible false
Hide mounted volumes:
$ gsettings set org.mate.caja.desktop volumes-visible false
Replace
false
with
true
for the icons to reappear.
Use a different window manager
The
marco
window manager can be replaced with another window manager via either of the following methods:
Using gsettings (recommended)
Execute the following to specify a different window manager for MATE:
$ gsettings set org.mate.session.required-components windowmanager
wm-name
Using MATE session autostart
You can autostart a window manager of your choice using
mate-session-properties
. This means that the autostarted window manager will replace the default window manager at login. Navigate to
Startup Applications
in the System Preferences. In the dialog click
Add.
The command should take the syntax
wm-name
--replace
.
Prevent Caja from managing the desktop
To prevent Caja from managing the desktop, execute the following:
$ gsettings set org.mate.background show-desktop-icons false
$ killall caja  # Caja will be restarted by session manager
Change window decoration button order
You can change the button order using the graphical dconf-editor or the gsettings command line tool:
$ gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general button-layout 'close,maximize,minimize:'
and put
menu
,
close
,
minimize
and
maximize
in your desired order, separated by commas. The colon is used to specify on which side of the titlebar the window buttons will appear and must be used for the changes to apply.
Auto open file manager after drive mount
By default, MATE automatically opens a new file manager window when a drive is mounted. To disable this:
$ gsettings set org.mate.media-handling automount-open false
And to disable automounting:
$ gsettings set org.mate.media-handling automount false
Spatial view in Caja
To ensure that each new folder opens in a new window (known as spatial view), open Caja's preferences dialog, click on the behaviour tab and tick the 'Open each folder in its own window' option. Alternatively, execute the following command which achieves the same effect:
$ gsettings set org.mate.caja.preferences always-use-browser false
Change font DPI setting
You can alter the DPI (dots per inch) of the fonts in MATE by right-clicking on the desktop and choosing
Change desktop background > Fonts > Details > Resolution
.
Change applications menu icon
By default, the applications menu icon is set to
start-here
. To use a different icon, copy your icon to a folder such as
/usr/local/share/pixmaps
and execute the following:
$ gsettings set org.mate.panel.menubar icon-name
icon
where
icon
is the name of your icon. Do not include the file extension in the icon name. Finally, restart MATE Panel.
Panel speed settings
Hide/Unhide delay
To adjust the amount of time it takes for the panel to disappear or reappear when autohide is enabled, execute the following:
$ dconf write /org/mate/panel/toplevels/
panel
/(un)hide-delay
time
where
panel
is either
top
or
bottom
and
time
is a value in miliseconds, e.g. 300.
Animation speed
To set the speed at which panel animations occur, execute the following:
$ dconf write /org/mate/panel/toplevels/
panel
/animation-speed
value
where
panel
is either
top
or
bottom
and
value
is either
"'fast'"
,
"'medium'"
or
"'slow'"
.
Set the terminal for caja-open-terminal
The
caja-open-terminal
extension uses GSettings to determine which terminal to use -
mate-terminal
is the default. To change the terminal that will be used, run the following command
$ gsettings set org.mate.applications-terminal exec
my-terminal
where
my-terminal
is the name of the terminal executable to be launched, for example:
xterm
.
Troubleshooting
Toggling compositing
Some software may have issues rendering graphics when working on an environment using the NVIDIA proprietary drivers and a compositing window manager.
To easily toggle the compositing feature, save the following script somewhere within the Home directory:
~/.scripts/compositing.sh
#!/bin/sh
if [ "$(gsettings get org.mate.Marco.general compositing-manager)" = "true" ]
then
  gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general compositing-manager false
else
  gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general compositing-manager true
fi
and then create a custom keyboard shortcut that executes the file, e.g.
Ctrl+Alt+C
, to
sh ~/.scripts/compositing.sh
.
Vertical sync for compositing
Mate's window manager,
marco
, supports tear-free software compositing via DRI3/Xpresent.
[1]
If your graphics driver does not support DRI3 (e.g. the Nvidia Proprietary driver),
marco
does not support vertical synchronization via
OpenGL
, which may cause video tearing with enabled compositing.
[2]
In this case, consider a different
composite manager
with OpenGL support such as
picom
.
Consistent cursor theme
See
Cursor themes#Desktop environments
.
Use of gradient backgrounds with LightDM
If you wish to use the default MATE (1.8)
Stripes
background as the LightDM background as well so as to make for seamless transition from LightDM to MATE, you will find that it is runtime-constructed from a grayscale PNG upon which MATE layers a vertical blue-to-green gradient, something which LightDM does not currently support. If insistent, you can work around this by temporarily setting
/org/mate/desktop/background/show-desktop-icons
to
false
, either through the
dconf-editor
tool available from the
System Tools
menu or by running
$ gsettings set org.mate.background show-desktop-icons false
from the Alt-F2
Run Application
dialog, then running
killall mate-panel
from said dialog and hitting
Print Screen
before the panel reappears. You are then presented with a
Save As
dialog for exactly that fully rendered, screen-sized PNG that you need for LightDM. Run
$ gsettings set org.mate.background show-desktop-icons true
to have your desktop icons reappear, if desired.
Enabling panel shadow
Due to a race condition, the panel shadow does not appear after logging in to the MATE desktop, even with compositing enabled.
[3]
Copy
/usr/share/applications/marco.desktop
and add a delay:
~/.local/share/applications/marco.desktop
X-MATE-Autostart-Phase=
Applications
X-MATE-Autostart-Delay=2
X-MATE-Provides=windowmanager
X-MATE-Autostart-Notify=true
Note
Delays are only allowed in the applications phase, hence
X-MATE-Autostart-Phase
must be set to
Applications
.
If this has no effect, increase the delay duration.
Logout/shutdown delayed by at-spi-registryd
When logging out or shutting down, you may find that you are presented with an
A program is still running: at-spi-registryd.desktop
popup. As a workaround, you can prevent
at-spi-registryd
from starting - see
GTK#Suppress warning about accessibility bus
- though this may have an effect on some accessibility features.
Caja's text file preview
Since the migration to GTK 3 this feature is not working.
[4]
GTK 2 applications seem to ignore default MATE themes
Themes that come with
mate-themes
need optional dependencies
gtk-engines
AUR
and
gtk-engine-murrine
AUR
for GTK 2 themes to function properly.
Extra decoration on CSD applications
An extra decoration can appear on CSD applications (Firefox, Visual Studio Code...) when they are unmaximized.
[5]
Uninstalling the package
mate-netbook
solves the issue.
Keyboard layout selector
When multiple keyboard layouts are enabled, a layout selection icon is displayed in the system tray. Because of a bug (
[6]
), depending on the currently used theme, it sometimes happens to be displayed with white font on bright background (or in some other barely legible configuration, such as with green font).
This issue can be worked around by manually setting the font color (e.g.,
'0 0 0'
for black):
$ gsettings set org.mate.peripherals-keyboard-xkb.indicator foreground-color '0 0 0'
See also
MATE homepage
MATE wiki for Arch Linux
MATE desktop screenshots
The MATE Desktop Environment
- Arch Linux forum discussion about MATE (Thread closed on 2017-01-05)