A typical MATE desktop environment | |
| Developer(s) | Clement Lefebvre, Perberos, Stefano Karapetsas, et al.[1] |
|---|---|
| Initial release | August 19, 2011 |
| Stable release | |
| Repository | |
| Written in | C, C++, Python[5] |
| Operating system | Unix-like |
| Type | Desktop environment |
| License | GPLv2, LGPLv2 |
| Website | mate-desktop |
MATE (/ˈmɑːteɪ/) is a desktop environment composed of free and open-source software that runs on Linux, BSD, and illumos operating systems.[6]
MATE is named after the South American plant yerba mate and tea made from the herb, mate.[7] The name was originally all capital letters to follow the nomenclature of other Free Software desktop environments like KDE and LXDE. The recursive backronym "MATE Advanced Traditional Environment" was subsequently adopted by most of the MATE community, again in the spirit of Free Software like GNU ("GNU's Not Unix!"). The use of a new name, instead of GNOME, avoids naming conflicts with GNOME 3 components.
An Argentine user of Arch Linux, named Perberos started the MATE project[8] to fork and continue GNOME 2 in response to the negative reception of GNOME 3, which had replaced its traditional taskbar (GNOME Panel) with GNOME Shell. MATE aims to maintain and continue the latest GNOME 2 code base, frameworks, and core applications.[9][10][11]
MATE was initially announced for Debian on November 8, 2013 at its official website.[12]
MATE became an official Arch Linux community package in January 2014.
|
See also: List of GTK applications |
MATE has forked a number of applications which originated as GNOME Core Applications, and developers have written several other applications from scratch. The forked applications have new names, most of them from Spanish.[13] MATE applications include:
Caja, which means "box" in Spanish, is a file manager forked from GNOME Files, formerly known as Nautilus. Caja functions as one of the core component of MATE desktop environment. Ever since the fork Caja has been developed and added new features.
Caja has many functions such as generating a folder and document, displaying file and folders, searching and managing files and installation or uninstallation of fonts. Caja can handle various kinds of file formats.
Caja added improvements at the recent release of MATE 1.26.[14] Some of them are:
Caja also provides many extensions like:
and so on, still now under development.
Caja is a popular file manager in Linux. One reason for this is that the Caja script extension allows users to add scripts easily.[15]
This is a text editor, which is a fork from Gedit. Pluma means "pen" in Spanish. See Pluma for details.
This is a document viewer, which is a fork of Evince. Atril means "lectern" in Spanish. For example, unlike Evince, Atril has a unique feature, which can handle EPUB document formats. It also equipped with caret navigation.[16]
This is a file archiver from File Roller, later named as Archive Manager. Engrampa means "to staple" in Spanish.
This is a image viewer, also known as "eom".
This is a calculator, also known as mate-calc.
This is a main graphical preferences of MATE desktop environment.
This is a graphical system monitor on the user's desktop.
This is a terminal emulator (from GNOME Terminal).
A window manager, fork from Metacity. It means "frame" in Spanish.
A menu item editor, which is a fork from Alacarte. It means "waiter" in Spanish.
MATE fully supports the GTK 3 application framework. The project is supported by Ubuntu MATE lead developer Martin Wimpress and by the Linux Mint development team:
We consider MATE yet another desktop, just like KDE, Gnome 3, Xfce etc... and based on the popularity of Gnome 2 in previous releases of Linux Mint, we are dedicated to support it and to help it improve. The most popular Linux desktop was, and arguably is, Gnome 2.[17]
New features have been added to Caja such as undo/redo[18] and diff viewing for file replacements.[19] MATE 1.6 removes some deprecated libraries, moving from mate-conf (a fork of GConf) to GSettings, and from mate-corba (a fork of GNOME's Bonobo) to D-Bus.
One of the aims of the MATE developers is to provide a traditional user experience while using the newest technologies. In MATE 1.20, which was released in February 2018, support for HiDPI was added and the GTK+ version got increased to 3.22. The MATE 1.22 release migrated many programs from Python 2 to Python 3 and from dbus-glib to GDBus. In an upcoming version, support for Wayland will be added.[20]
MATE adopted the following philosophy as its project: Minimalism, KISS principle, Cowboy coding and Literate programming. This philosophy was seen on a page at the old official wiki site.[21]
| Date | Version |
|---|---|
| 2011-06-18 | Announced at Arch Linux forum[22] |
| 2011-08-19 | Initial release[citation needed] |
| 2012-04-16 | 1.2 |
| 2012-07-30 | 1.4 |
| 2013-04-02 | 1.6 |
| 2014-03-04 | 1.8 |
| 2015-06-11 | 1.10 |
| 2015-11-05 | 1.12 |
| 2016-04-08 | 1.14 |
| 2016-09-21 | 1.16 |
| 2017-03-13 | 1.18 |
| 2018-02-07 | 1.20 |
| 2019-03-18 | 1.22 |
| 2020-02-10 | 1.24 |
| 2021-08-03 | 1.26 |
(Notice) There are an odd number of versions between each official release. They are treated as versions under development, and are not announced as official releases.
MATE is available in many Linux distributions and Unix-like operating systems. The official site lists over thirty, ranging from Arch Linux to Void Linux.[23] The below are several examples.
MATE is the default desktop environment for:
MATE is a desktop environment available for:
