8 ms·

Ubuntu Mate 20.04

71 points by pantalaimon 7y ago

Okkef 7y ago
The number of emojis in that text is appalling.
- enriquto 7y ago
  it's the modern equivalent of blink and animated gifs everywhere on the page on personal websites of the 2000. In a few years this emoji abuse will be mocked by everybody.
  - chainwax 7y ago
    At least we appear to be trending in the right direction.
  - imglorp 7y ago
    I'd be okay with everybody starting the mocking now.
- ryandvm 7y ago
  Every time I'm tempted to use an emoji I ask myself, "what would Herman Melville do?"
  - hirundo 7y ago
    Someone gave that question a lot of thought: http://czyborra.com/unicode/emojidick.pdf http://czyborra.com/unicode/emojidick.pdf
- barneygale 7y ago
  Hacker News: where we pine for expressive, DIY web of the 90s/00s but pour scorn on anyone adding character to their projects today.
  - bzb3 7y ago
    Emoji copypastas are old and hardly original anymore.
  - rement 7y ago
    I'm okay with expressive but all the emojis made it a little hard to read. Maybe don't inject them into the middle of phrases. Good use of emoji > the Ubuntu MATE 19.10 interim release is our most actively used interim release to date! :champagne: > Recognising that we’re on to a good thing, :thumbsup: we’ve repeated this trick > Thank you! Thank you all for getting out there and making a difference! :green_heart: Annoying use of emoji > That was a hugely successful :tada: initiative > with developers to highlight :flashlight: where attention was needed. edit: apparently hacker news strips out emojis
    - enriquto 7y ago
      The fact that they are rendered as text provides a good rule of thumb for when they are appropriate : 1. Can you read your sentence without reading the emoji text and it makes sense? 2. Can you read your sentence with the emoji text and it still makes sense (and it means the same thing, with emphasis added)? If the answer to both questions is YES, then using the emoji is OK.
      - grouff 7y ago
        3. Can you easily differentiate your sentence from a teenagers instagram post?
        MR4D 7y ago
        I didn’t know teenagers on Instagram wrote in sentences. Frankly I thought it was hieroglyphics.
- mk89 7y ago
  Emojis? I wish that was the problem. I really have an issue reading the article without focusing on how terrible the font is, it's like each word is punching my eyes.
  - bachmeier 7y ago
    It makes sense that they'd use the Ubuntu font, but at least for me it's terrible for reading. All the emoji were a problem though, and the bold typeface.
- smrq 7y ago
  My first instinct reading this comment was that you were being old and cranky. Get off my internet, young'ns! Well, after clicking through to the article... I'm sorry for doubting you. This text almost could have been mistaken for an emoji copypasta.
- d33 7y ago
  Is there a bookmarklet around that would remove them?
- paleogizmo 7y ago
  Is this the HN equivalent of being a grammar nazi?
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
  It's absurd, but absurd isn't automatically a bad choice. If it's intentionally making a loud point of "don't take this too seriously, this is not formal" I'm all about this. This as informal is silly. This as anti-formal is great.
robrtsql 7y ago
> We have given MATE Optimus an update. MATE Optimus adds support for NVIDIA On-Demand and will now prompt users to log out when switching the GPU’s profile. I wonder if this will actually work. It seems like, in version 18.04 of *buntu, there was a pretty major regression which required a reboot in order to turn on or off the dGPU and save power in Optimus laptops, when previously it only required a logout. Kind of a pain in the ass for my Dell XPS 15 9570 which seems to take a long time to reboot.
- gravypod 7y ago
  I hope someone with context on this issue sees your comment and can confirm if this contains an actual, working, on-demand GPU scheduler. If it does I'll be switching immediately.
manaskarekar 7y ago
Just finished moving from Lubuntu (LXDE) to Mate. I loved LXDE and still think it is the best balance between no-nonsense "stay out of your way", almost all the stuff works and tweak your preferences. Sadly, that project is dead and has been replaced by the arguably better LXQt. I don't think LXQt has reached the same maturity as LXDE just yet, but surely will eventually. Left with the task of choosing a new daily OS, I played around with Lubuntu and LXQt, i3, XFCE, Mate and reviewed some others including the interesting NixOS. Ended up choosing Ubuntu Mate because even though it's a heavyweight, I feel it has made a lot of right choices and works great. Even detects external monitors on plug/unplug. If Pop!_OS was out already, I would have considered that, but so far Mate is really good.
- crypt1d 7y ago
  > Even detects external monitors on plug/unplug. I can already hear all the Windows/MacOS folks' giggles on this one!
  - Majestic121 7y ago
    To be honest most Linux folks giggle on this one as well, it's been more than 12 years that hotplugging screens is not an issue. I remember having it with vanilla Ubuntu when I started using Linux in 2008/9.
    - manaskarekar 7y ago
      Funnily enough, the other topic on the front page (Xubuntu 20.04) has the top voted comment discussing the state of external displays. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22963765 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22963765 To be fair, as I've mentioned in another comment, I was not strictly talking about hotplugging alone. Detection of external displays hasn't been the issue, usability in some form or another has.
  - throwaway55554 7y ago
    We don't listen to those people. Seriously. Of Windows, MacOS and Linux, nobody other than a fanboy would say any of them get everything right.
elagost 7y ago
Is GNOME the only desktop environment going forward with wayland at this point? Wayland has been the only way I can enjoy tear-free, config-tweak-free video on Linux for the past few years, and that leaves me stuck with either GNOME or something like Sway. Mate would be a great middle ground but I don't want to have to mess with compositors again.
- bluGill 7y ago
  KDE is working on it too. I'm not sure if it is considered ready but there are a number of developers using KDE on Wayland, and have been for years. Getting all the bugs out is hard.
- akvadrako 7y ago
  It seems like GNOME, KDE and Sway are the only serious wayland options.
- foobarbecue 7y ago
  KDE is still pushing ahead with Wayland. I just fixed my screen tearing on x11 Kubuntu yesterday though, it was just one command to enable Optimus synchronization. (I know, that's a config tweak). I haven't tried Kde Wayland.
- boudin 7y ago
  Mate is moving in this direction too via Mir, I have no idea where they are though.
- badsectoracula 7y ago
  Well, GNOME people came up with it, others - especially the smaller desktops/WMs who do not exactly have RedHat money behind them - didn't really ask for it. In any case, it certainly isn't config-free but it should be an one time thing only and then you should be able to have tear-free video playback on Linux under Xorg just fine. It is really up to your video player to do it though. Personally i do not remember having issues with VLC using either AMD or Nvidia GPUs.
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
RocketSyntax 7y ago
Nice! I think this is what I've been using on AWS Workspaces. It's not so bad.
39d3493I93 7y ago
Something I really do not understand about the linux community is why it seems to simply be incapable of coordinating and focusing efforts. How many distros are there of many more engineers all working in a totally defused manner to never even get close to a threshold level necessary to become an even slightly competitive offering to Win or MacOS. There seems to be a lesson to be learned about humanity in that dynamic; it is a reflection of the whole of society where the ruling class' real power is the ability to focus its interests and get others to advance their interests for them, while the masses of the population are not only unable to organize effectively, but it takes very little effort to sew the seeds of fragmentation and diffusion.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
bluedino 7y ago
I know it's a dark theme and not a true 'dark mode', but it really bugs me how many of the screen elements are still light gray.
- cassiet 7y ago
  Why exactly?
  - edoceo 7y ago
    It's low contrast which increases the time needed to decipher the glyphs in your mind.
    - cassiet 7y ago
      Oh, no, that’s what happens in YOUR mind.
- dopamean 7y ago
  I agree. I think it just looks bad.
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  What are you referring to?
bachmeier 7y ago
I moved away from Gnome to KDE for several years after Gnome 3 came out. Try as I might, I just couldn't get into other desktop environments (KDE, XFCE, LXDE, I tried quite a few). A few years ago I switched back to Mate and haven't considered leaving. It provides the functionality I need while staying out of my way, which is more or less the reason I can't move away from text editors despite their complete lack of coolness.
Proven 7y ago
Next time please try to write a blog post with less emoji crap in it and I promise I'll try to read it.
incadenza 7y ago
Do any of the Ubuntu flavors support fractional scaling without big performance hits? That’s really my last remaining gripe with Linux on the desktop.
Aaronstotle 7y ago
Mate is my favorite desktop environment, might have to install this on a spare desktop I got lying around.
sg47 7y ago
Does anyone have recommendations for a cheap laptop for playing around with Ubuntu? Will use it for light programming, poking around. Wifi needs to work reliably. I can work around all other quirks.
- seanhunter 7y ago
  Cheap reconditioned lenovo thinkpad wolud be my recommendation
- PleaseHelpMe 7y ago
  it depends on where you live. Find Asus/Lenovo/Dell
- pantalaimon 7y ago
  Used Thinkpads are cheap, durable and well supported. Linux will also work well on other brands, it's just that with many cheap laptop manufacturers the hardware has a tendency to fall apart after a few years of use. Thinkpads (T-Series) just don't do that.
stx 7y ago
One thing I do not like about Ubuntu anymore is its embrace of snap packages. It just updates on its own. This has created surprises where a package or program just suddenly stops working correctly. Because I did not manually update it I have no idea what happened that could cause it. https://askubuntu.com/questions/1131182/how-can-i-disable-automatic-update-for-a-single-snap-in-ubuntu https://askubuntu.com/questions/1131182/how-can-i-disable-au... To me Snap was a bad choice. I used to run Gentoo but it started to lack in documentation maintenance and I became tired of spending so much time solving problems. Full disk encryption was a bit of a chore to setup on Gentoo and even then I was not sure I was doing it in a reliable way which required more testing. On Ubuntu it was just a few clicks.
- 8bitsrule 7y ago
  I've found that simply uninstalling 'snapd' solves that problem. Complete instructions: https://www.kevin-custer.com/blog/disabling-snaps-in-ubuntu-20-04/ https://www.kevin-custer.com/blog/disabling-snaps-in-ubuntu-...
drcross 7y ago
Can anyone comment on the telemetry capabilities of modern Ubuntu?
mixmastamyk 7y ago
Love Mate as it is one of the closest to the consistent user interface days of Windows 2000. Fewer WTFs/minute. There is a good dark theme as well, required. One reason I use it over say XCFE, is that it still has the Locations timezone/day/night map that is perfect for working across timezones. No one else seems to have it, and that is why I stay: https://askubuntu.com/questions/312634/how-do-i-get-the-good-ol-timezone-world-map-back/1230460 https://askubuntu.com/questions/312634/how-do-i-get-the-good...
- agumonkey 7y ago
  IMO XFCE is a solid point above Mate for win2k feel and low WTF rate. It's my last GUIlty pleasure :)
  - mixmastamyk 7y ago
    It doesn’t have the timezone thing or a good dark theme, last I checked.
    - agumonkey 7y ago
      Yeah those are fair points but there's something in Mate that feels like a cloak.. while XFCE seems quite closer to the look and feel that I miss.
      - mixmastamyk 7y ago
        It reminds me of the Win2k installers, I really like it. Just feels unfinished, as Mate does too.
        agumonkey 7y ago
        I'm confused, what feels unfinished ? I do have a thing for win2k era installers too.. even though I can't deny unattended package install ala linux (now chocolate and similar on windows) is amazing ofc.
Rich_Morin 7y ago
I really wish Ubuntu Mate would come out for the RasPi 4.

Ubuntu Mate 20.04

71 points by pantalaimon 7y ago

Okkef 7y ago

The number of emojis in that text is appalling.

enriquto 7y ago
it's the modern equivalent of blink and animated gifs everywhere on the page on personal websites of the 2000. In a few years this emoji abuse will be mocked by everybody.
- chainwax 7y ago
  At least we appear to be trending in the right direction.
- imglorp 7y ago
  I'd be okay with everybody starting the mocking now.
ryandvm 7y ago
Every time I'm tempted to use an emoji I ask myself, "what would Herman Melville do?"
- hirundo 7y ago
  Someone gave that question a lot of thought: http://czyborra.com/unicode/emojidick.pdf http://czyborra.com/unicode/emojidick.pdf
barneygale 7y ago
Hacker News: where we pine for expressive, DIY web of the 90s/00s but pour scorn on anyone adding character to their projects today.
- bzb3 7y ago
  Emoji copypastas are old and hardly original anymore.
- rement 7y ago
  I'm okay with expressive but all the emojis made it a little hard to read. Maybe don't inject them into the middle of phrases. Good use of emoji > the Ubuntu MATE 19.10 interim release is our most actively used interim release to date! :champagne: > Recognising that we’re on to a good thing, :thumbsup: we’ve repeated this trick > Thank you! Thank you all for getting out there and making a difference! :green_heart: Annoying use of emoji > That was a hugely successful :tada: initiative > with developers to highlight :flashlight: where attention was needed. edit: apparently hacker news strips out emojis
  - enriquto 7y ago
    The fact that they are rendered as text provides a good rule of thumb for when they are appropriate : 1. Can you read your sentence without reading the emoji text and it makes sense? 2. Can you read your sentence with the emoji text and it still makes sense (and it means the same thing, with emphasis added)? If the answer to both questions is YES, then using the emoji is OK.
    - grouff 7y ago
      3. Can you easily differentiate your sentence from a teenagers instagram post?
      - MR4D 7y ago
        I didn’t know teenagers on Instagram wrote in sentences. Frankly I thought it was hieroglyphics.
mk89 7y ago
Emojis? I wish that was the problem. I really have an issue reading the article without focusing on how terrible the font is, it's like each word is punching my eyes.
- bachmeier 7y ago
  It makes sense that they'd use the Ubuntu font, but at least for me it's terrible for reading. All the emoji were a problem though, and the bold typeface.
smrq 7y ago
My first instinct reading this comment was that you were being old and cranky. Get off my internet, young'ns! Well, after clicking through to the article... I'm sorry for doubting you. This text almost could have been mistaken for an emoji copypasta.
d33 7y ago
Is there a bookmarklet around that would remove them?
paleogizmo 7y ago
Is this the HN equivalent of being a grammar nazi?
6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
It's absurd, but absurd isn't automatically a bad choice. If it's intentionally making a loud point of "don't take this too seriously, this is not formal" I'm all about this. This as informal is silly. This as anti-formal is great.

robrtsql 7y ago

> We have given MATE Optimus an update. MATE Optimus adds support for NVIDIA On-Demand and will now prompt users to log out when switching the GPU’s profile. I wonder if this will actually work. It seems like, in version 18.04 of *buntu, there was a pretty major regression which required a reboot in order to turn on or off the dGPU and save power in Optimus laptops, when previously it only required a logout. Kind of a pain in the ass for my Dell XPS 15 9570 which seems to take a long time to reboot.

gravypod 7y ago
I hope someone with context on this issue sees your comment and can confirm if this contains an actual, working, on-demand GPU scheduler. If it does I'll be switching immediately.

manaskarekar 7y ago

Just finished moving from Lubuntu (LXDE) to Mate. I loved LXDE and still think it is the best balance between no-nonsense "stay out of your way", almost all the stuff works and tweak your preferences. Sadly, that project is dead and has been replaced by the arguably better LXQt. I don't think LXQt has reached the same maturity as LXDE just yet, but surely will eventually. Left with the task of choosing a new daily OS, I played around with Lubuntu and LXQt, i3, XFCE, Mate and reviewed some others including the interesting NixOS. Ended up choosing Ubuntu Mate because even though it's a heavyweight, I feel it has made a lot of right choices and works great. Even detects external monitors on plug/unplug. If Pop!_OS was out already, I would have considered that, but so far Mate is really good.

crypt1d 7y ago
> Even detects external monitors on plug/unplug. I can already hear all the Windows/MacOS folks' giggles on this one!
- Majestic121 7y ago
  To be honest most Linux folks giggle on this one as well, it's been more than 12 years that hotplugging screens is not an issue. I remember having it with vanilla Ubuntu when I started using Linux in 2008/9.
  - manaskarekar 7y ago
    Funnily enough, the other topic on the front page (Xubuntu 20.04) has the top voted comment discussing the state of external displays. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22963765 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22963765 To be fair, as I've mentioned in another comment, I was not strictly talking about hotplugging alone. Detection of external displays hasn't been the issue, usability in some form or another has.
- throwaway55554 7y ago
  We don't listen to those people. Seriously. Of Windows, MacOS and Linux, nobody other than a fanboy would say any of them get everything right.

elagost 7y ago

Is GNOME the only desktop environment going forward with wayland at this point? Wayland has been the only way I can enjoy tear-free, config-tweak-free video on Linux for the past few years, and that leaves me stuck with either GNOME or something like Sway. Mate would be a great middle ground but I don't want to have to mess with compositors again.

bluGill 7y ago
KDE is working on it too. I'm not sure if it is considered ready but there are a number of developers using KDE on Wayland, and have been for years. Getting all the bugs out is hard.
akvadrako 7y ago
It seems like GNOME, KDE and Sway are the only serious wayland options.
foobarbecue 7y ago
KDE is still pushing ahead with Wayland. I just fixed my screen tearing on x11 Kubuntu yesterday though, it was just one command to enable Optimus synchronization. (I know, that's a config tweak). I haven't tried Kde Wayland.
boudin 7y ago
Mate is moving in this direction too via Mir, I have no idea where they are though.
badsectoracula 7y ago
Well, GNOME people came up with it, others - especially the smaller desktops/WMs who do not exactly have RedHat money behind them - didn't really ask for it. In any case, it certainly isn't config-free but it should be an one time thing only and then you should be able to have tear-free video playback on Linux under Xorg just fine. It is really up to your video player to do it though. Personally i do not remember having issues with VLC using either AMD or Nvidia GPUs.
mixmastamyk 7y ago

RocketSyntax 7y ago

Nice! I think this is what I've been using on AWS Workspaces. It's not so bad.

39d3493I93 7y ago

Something I really do not understand about the linux community is why it seems to simply be incapable of coordinating and focusing efforts. How many distros are there of many more engineers all working in a totally defused manner to never even get close to a threshold level necessary to become an even slightly competitive offering to Win or MacOS. There seems to be a lesson to be learned about humanity in that dynamic; it is a reflection of the whole of society where the ruling class' real power is the ability to focus its interests and get others to advance their interests for them, while the masses of the population are not only unable to organize effectively, but it takes very little effort to sew the seeds of fragmentation and diffusion.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

bluedino 7y ago

I know it's a dark theme and not a true 'dark mode', but it really bugs me how many of the screen elements are still light gray.

cassiet 7y ago
Why exactly?
- edoceo 7y ago
  It's low contrast which increases the time needed to decipher the glyphs in your mind.
  - cassiet 7y ago
    Oh, no, that’s what happens in YOUR mind.
dopamean 7y ago
I agree. I think it just looks bad.
mixmastamyk 7y ago
What are you referring to?

bachmeier 7y ago

I moved away from Gnome to KDE for several years after Gnome 3 came out. Try as I might, I just couldn't get into other desktop environments (KDE, XFCE, LXDE, I tried quite a few). A few years ago I switched back to Mate and haven't considered leaving. It provides the functionality I need while staying out of my way, which is more or less the reason I can't move away from text editors despite their complete lack of coolness.

Proven 7y ago

Next time please try to write a blog post with less emoji crap in it and I promise I'll try to read it.

incadenza 7y ago

Do any of the Ubuntu flavors support fractional scaling without big performance hits? That’s really my last remaining gripe with Linux on the desktop.

Aaronstotle 7y ago

Mate is my favorite desktop environment, might have to install this on a spare desktop I got lying around.

sg47 7y ago

Does anyone have recommendations for a cheap laptop for playing around with Ubuntu? Will use it for light programming, poking around. Wifi needs to work reliably. I can work around all other quirks.

seanhunter 7y ago
Cheap reconditioned lenovo thinkpad wolud be my recommendation
PleaseHelpMe 7y ago
it depends on where you live. Find Asus/Lenovo/Dell
pantalaimon 7y ago
Used Thinkpads are cheap, durable and well supported. Linux will also work well on other brands, it's just that with many cheap laptop manufacturers the hardware has a tendency to fall apart after a few years of use. Thinkpads (T-Series) just don't do that.

stx 7y ago

One thing I do not like about Ubuntu anymore is its embrace of snap packages. It just updates on its own. This has created surprises where a package or program just suddenly stops working correctly. Because I did not manually update it I have no idea what happened that could cause it. https://askubuntu.com/questions/1131182/how-can-i-disable-automatic-update-for-a-single-snap-in-ubuntu https://askubuntu.com/questions/1131182/how-can-i-disable-au... To me Snap was a bad choice. I used to run Gentoo but it started to lack in documentation maintenance and I became tired of spending so much time solving problems. Full disk encryption was a bit of a chore to setup on Gentoo and even then I was not sure I was doing it in a reliable way which required more testing. On Ubuntu it was just a few clicks.

8bitsrule 7y ago
I've found that simply uninstalling 'snapd' solves that problem. Complete instructions: https://www.kevin-custer.com/blog/disabling-snaps-in-ubuntu-20-04/ https://www.kevin-custer.com/blog/disabling-snaps-in-ubuntu-...

drcross 7y ago

Can anyone comment on the telemetry capabilities of modern Ubuntu?

mixmastamyk 7y ago

Love Mate as it is one of the closest to the consistent user interface days of Windows 2000. Fewer WTFs/minute. There is a good dark theme as well, required. One reason I use it over say XCFE, is that it still has the Locations timezone/day/night map that is perfect for working across timezones. No one else seems to have it, and that is why I stay: https://askubuntu.com/questions/312634/how-do-i-get-the-good-ol-timezone-world-map-back/1230460 https://askubuntu.com/questions/312634/how-do-i-get-the-good...

agumonkey 7y ago
IMO XFCE is a solid point above Mate for win2k feel and low WTF rate. It's my last GUIlty pleasure :)
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  It doesn’t have the timezone thing or a good dark theme, last I checked.
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    Yeah those are fair points but there's something in Mate that feels like a cloak.. while XFCE seems quite closer to the look and feel that I miss.
    - mixmastamyk 7y ago
      It reminds me of the Win2k installers, I really like it. Just feels unfinished, as Mate does too.
      - agumonkey 7y ago
        I'm confused, what feels unfinished ? I do have a thing for win2k era installers too.. even though I can't deny unattended package install ala linux (now chocolate and similar on windows) is amazing ofc.

Rich_Morin 7y ago

I really wish Ubuntu Mate would come out for the RasPi 4.