Learn about Linux MATE desktop environment

MATE desktop environment is a continuation of GNOME 2. MATE provides an intriguing and intuitive desktop environment like traditional for Linux and other Unix-style operating systems. MATE is being actively developed to add support for new technologies, while maintaining a traditional desktop experience.

Setting

MATE is available in the official repository and can be installed with one of the following:

1. The mate group contains the core desktop environment required for the standard MATE experience.
2. The mate-extra group contains additional utilities and applications that integrate well with the MATE desktop. Only installing the mate-extra group will not drag the entire mate group through the dependencies. If you want to install all MATE packages, you will need to install both groups.

Basic desktops include marco, mate-panel and mate-session-manager.

MATE application

MATE includes the majority of GNOME 2 applications and utilities, which are split into small branches and renamed to avoid conflicts with GNOME partners. 3. Below is a list of popular GNOME applications that have been renamed. during MATE.

Application GNOME 2MATEMenu editor (Menu editor) Alacarte mozo File manager Nautilus caja Window manager (Window manager) Metacity marco Text editor Gedit pluma Image viewer (Image viewer) ) Eye of GNOME Eye of MATE ( eom ) Document viewer Evince atril Archive manager File Roller engrampa

Other prefixed core applications and components areGNOME (such as GNOME Terminal , GNOME Panel , GNOME Menu , etc.) changed to MATE and become MATE Panel, MATE Menu, etc.

Additional MATE package

There are a number of other informal MATE applications that are contributed and maintained by the MATE community, so are not included in mate or extra-mate groups .

1. Dock Applet - Application dock for MATE panel (MATE control panel).

1. Online Radio Applet - A MATE panel applet allows you to open your favorite online radio station with just one click.

 http://www.zavedil.com/online-radio-applet/ 

1. MATE Menu - Advanced menu for MATE Panel, a branch of MintMenu.

1. MATE Tweak - Tweaking tool for MATE, a branch of mintDesktop.

1. BriskMothy - Modern, efficient menu for MATE desktop environment from SolusOS distribution.

Additional packages need to be installed to take advantage of some of Caja's advanced features.

Starting with MATE

Select MATE from the menu in the Display Manager of your choice.

Also, to start MATE with startx, add exec mate-session to the ~ / .xinitrc file .

Configuration

MATE can be configured with the Control Center ( mate-control-center ) application provided by mate-control-center package . To manage some hardware, you may need to install additional tools.

Sound

PulseAudio and ALSA backends are supported by mate-media package.

Bluetooth

To support Bluetooth devices, install the blueman package.

Network

To configure the network, install the applet-manager-applet package.

Energy

UPower Backend is supported by the mate-power-manager package.

Printer

To configure the printer, install the system-config-printer package.

Accessibility (accessibility feature)

MATE is very suitable for use in mobility impairment. Install Orca, Espeak screen reader for visually impaired or visually impaired people) and Onboard (on-screen keyboard useful for users with reduced mobility).

Before starting to use MATE for the first time, enter the following command as a user who needs accessibility features:

 $ gsettings set org.mate.interface accessibility true 

After starting MATE, you can configure accessibility applications via System> Preferences> Assistive Technologies , although if you need Orca, you will need to run it from the Alt + F2 window.

Notification

Discharge the battery

To turn off battery discharge notifications, run the command:

 $ gsettings set org.mate.power-manager.notify-discharging false 

Brightness

Sometimes, ACPI does not work well due to different motherboard settings and ACPI requirements, resulting in, for example, incorrect brightness notification. This includes some laptops with dual graphics cards (for example, Nvidia / Radeon dedicated GPUs with Intel / AMD integrated GPUs). Also, sometimes ACPI needs to register its backlight acpi_video0 , even if a backlight already exists (like intel_backlight ), which can be done by adding one of the following kernel parameters:

 acpi_backlight=video acpi_backlight=vendor acpi_backlight=native 

If you find that changing backlight acpi_video0 doesn't really change the brightness, you may need to use acpi_backlight = none.

Tips:

1. On the Nvidia Optimus laptop, the kernel nomodeset parameter can interfere with the backlight tuning capability.
2. On Asus laptops, you may also need to download kernel modules asus-nb-wmi.
3. Disabling Legacy Boot mode on the Dell XPS13 breaks backlight support.

Tips and tricks

Disable Compositing feature

Compositing feature is turned on by default. To turn it off, navigate to Look and Feel> Windows> General in System Preferences and check the box next to Enable software compositing window manager . Alternatively, you can run the following command from the terminal:

 $ gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general compositing-manager false 

Disable placing new windows in the center

By default, new windows are placed in the center. To turn off this feature, navigate to Windows> Placement in System Preferences and check the box next to the Center new windows option . Alternatively, you can run the following command in the terminal:

 $ gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general center-new-windows false 

Disable the window capture feature

Window capture feature is turned on by default. To turn it off, navigate to Windows> Placement in System Preferences and check the box next to Enable window tiling . Alternatively, you can run the following command in the terminal:

 $ gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general allow-tiling false 

Un-install on the enlarged window

You can hide the settings on the enlarged window with the mate-tweak tool. After installing it, navigate to Look and Feel> MATE Tweak> Windows in System Preferences and activate the option Undecorate maximized windows in the Window Behavior section .

Tip : If this option is grayed out and unavailable, try installing the mate-extra group.

Show or hide the desktop icon

By default, MATE displays many icons on the desktop, including the contents of the desktop, computer, Home and network folders, trash and mounted drives. You can display or hide only some icons or all of them at once using gsettings.

Hide all desktop icons

 $ gsettings set org.mate.background show-desktop-icons false 

Doing so may cause some artifact for the graphics on the secondary monitor.

Hide individual icons

1. Hide computer icons:

 $ gsettings set org.mate.caja.desktop computer-icon-visible false 

1. Hide user folder icon:

 $ gsettings set org.mate.caja.desktop home-icon-visible false 

1. Hide network icons:

 $ gsettings set org.mate.caja.desktop network-icon-visible false 

1. Hide trash icon:

 $ gsettings set org.mate.caja.desktop trash-icon-visible false 

1. Hide mounted volumes:

 $ gsettings set org.mate.caja.desktop volumes-visible false 

Replace false with true in the above commands so that the icon appears again.

Use another window manager

The macro window manager can be replaced with another window manager via one of the following methods:

Use gsettings (recommended)

Execute the following command to specify another window manager for MATE:

 $ gsettings set org.mate.session.required-components windowmanager wm-name 

Use the auto-start feature of MATE sessions

You can automatically start the window manager of your choice by using mate-session-properties. This means that the autostart window manager will replace the default window manager when logging in. Navigate to Startup Applications in System Preferences. In the dialog box click Add. The command will have wm-name --replace syntax .

The Caja pane manages the desktop

To prevent Caja from managing the desktop, execute the following command:

 $ gsettings set org.mate.background show-desktop-icons false $ killall caja # Caja will be restarted by session manager 

Change the order of buttons on the window

You can change the button order with the gsettings command-line tool :

 $ gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general button-layout 'close,maximize,minimize:' 

Then, place the Menu, Close, Minimize and Maximize buttons in the order you want, separated by commas. A colon is used to specify the title bar, which window buttons will appear and which must be used for the changes to be applied.

Automatically open the file manager after mounting the drive

By default, MATE automatically opens a new file management window when the drive is mounted. To disable this feature, run the following command:

 $ gsettings set org.mate.media-handling automount-open false 

And to turn off auto-mount:

 $ gsettings set org.mate.media-handling automount false 

Screensaver

MATE uses mate-screensaver to lock the session. By default, there are a number of screensaver restrictions available. To provide more screensavers, install the mate-screensaver-hacks package. This package will allow you to use screensaver XScreenSaver with mate-screensaver.

Spatial view in Caja

To make sure each folder opens in a new window (called Spatial view), open the options dialog of Caja, click the Behavior tab, and check the Open each folder option in its own window . In addition, executing the following command achieves the same effect:

 $ gsettings set org.mate.caja.preferences always-use-browser false 

Change DPI settings for fonts

You can change the DPI (Dots Per Inch - number of dots per inch) of the font in MATE by right-clicking on the desktop and selecting Change desktop background> Fonts> Details> Resolution .

Change the application menu icon

By default, the application menu icon is set to start-here. To use another icon, copy your icon to a directory like / usr / local / share / pixmaps and execute the following command:

 $ gsettings set org.mate.panel.menubar icon-name icon 

In it icon is the name of the icon. Do not include the file extension in the icon name. Finally, restart the MATE Panel.

Control panel settings

Hide / Hide latency

To adjust the amount of time required for the panel to disappear or reappear when autohide mode is turned on (auto-hide), execute the following command:

 $ dconf write /org/mate/panel/toplevels/panel/(un)hide-delay time 

Where the panel is top or bottom and time is the value in milliseconds, for example: 300.

Animation speed

To set the speed for animation on the control panel, execute the following command:

 $ dconf write /org/mate/panel/toplevels/panel/animation-speed value 

In that top or bottom panel and values ​​are "fast", "medium" or "slow".

Set the terminal for caja-open-terminal

Caja-open-terminal extensions use GSettings to determine which terminal to use - mate-terminal by default. To change the terminal used, run the following command:

 $ gsettings set org.mate.applications-terminal exec my-terminal 

Where my-terminal is the name of the executable terminal that is started, for example, xterm.

Resovle problem

Compositing feature changes

Some software may experience rendering issues when working on an environment using proprietary Nvidia drivers and a compositing window manager.

To make it easy to switch the Compositing feature, save the following script somewhere in the Home folder, for example ~ / .scripts / compositing.sh:

 #!/bin/bash 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, for example: Ctrl + Alt + C , to sh ~ / .scripts / compositing.sh.

Vertical sync for Compositing

The window manager of MATE, marco, supports software compositing via DRI3 / Xpresent.

If your graphics card driver does not support DRI3 (for example, Nvidia exclusive driver), the macro will not support VSync via OpenGL. This may cause video tearing if the Compositing feature is enabled. In this case, consider another composite manager with OpenGL support like Compton.

Theme pointer consistent

During MATE, you can use mate-control-center or gsettings. To change the theme, use the following command:

 gsettings set org.mate.peripherals-mouse cursor-theme cursor_theme_name 

To change the size, use the following command:

 gsettings set org.mate.peripherals-mouse theme-size 

Use the background gradient with LightDM

If you want to use background MATE (1.8) Stripes default to making background LightDM, as well as to make seamless transition from LightDM to MATE, you will see that it is built from a gray scale, according to the MATE layers. arranged in a vertical gradient, from blue to green, which LightDM does not currently support. You can solve this problem by temporarily setting / org / mate / desktop / background / show-desktop-icons to false, via the dconf-editor tool available from the System Tools menu or by running the command:

 $ gsettings set org.mate.background show-desktop-icons false 

from the Alt + F2 Run Application dialog box, then run killall mate-panel from the dialog box and click Print Screen before the panel reappears. Then you will see the Save As dialog box with PNG screen size, fully rendered, that you need for LightDM. Run the following command:

 $ gsettings set org.mate.background show-desktop-icons true 

let the desktop icons reappear, if desired.

Activate the shadow panel

The shadow panel does not appear after logging in to the MATE desktop, even if the compositing feature is enabled.

Copy /usr/share/applications/marco.desktop and add latency:

 ~/.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 : Delay is only allowed during the application phase, so X-MATE-Autostart-Phase must be set to Applications.

If this does not work, increase the latency time.

Disable scrolling in the taskbar

One feature of the MATE dashboard window list is that windows can be scrolled with a mouse or touchpad. This feature may cause problems for some people because they may accidentally roll through windows.

Although there is no way to disable this feature through the MATE settings, you can disable it by patching libwnck3 using Arch Build System. In this case, rebuild libwnck3 with the following patch.

Logout / shutdown is delayed by at-spi-registryd

When you log off or off, you can see the message A program is still running: at-spi-registryd.desktop appears. You can prevent at-spi-registryd from starting, although this may have an impact on some accessibility features.

Preview the Caja text file

Because the process moves to GTK + 3, this feature does not work anymore.

The GTK + 2 applications seem to ignore the default MATE themes

Themes that come with mate-themes need gtk-engine optional dependency and gtk-engine-murrine so that GTK + 2 theme works correctly.

Check the speaker does not work

For backend PulseAudio, please install the optional dependency of libcanberra, libcanberra-pulse.

Install more on CSD applications

An additional installation may appear on CSD applications (Firefox, Visual Studio Code, etc.) when they are not zoomed in.

Uninstalling the mate-netbook package will solve this problem.