MATE 1.6 packages have been available for Arch Linux for a good while now. So why the blog post?

Over the last few months the MATE 1.6 packages for Arch Linux have been fixed, cleaned up and enhanced. Here is an overview of what we’ve been working on:

All Arch Linux specific bugs have been fixed.

New automated build scripts and build cluster.

Full support for the following platforms: armv6h (Raspberry Pi) armv7h i686 x86_64

Packaged 9 additional applications/applets contributed by the MATE community.

Choice of Pulse Audio or GStreamer backends.

Cherry picked some systemd and logind features from MATE 1.7.

and features from MATE 1.7. Cherry picked some upower features from MATE 1.7.

features from MATE 1.7. Cherry picked miscellaneous bug fixes from MATE 1.7.

MATE 1.6 PKGBUILDs now automatically synced to the AUR.

The Arch Linux package repository for MATE is now signed.

You can find out everything you need to know about installing MATE 1.6 on Arch Linux from the following wiki page:

I’d like to say a special thank you to:

Wolfgang Ulbrich for working with the Fedora development team to hunt down systemd , logind and upower fixes that are hugely beneficial for Arch Linux and also for contributing a good number of the community applications.

, and fixes that are hugely beneficial for Arch Linux and also for contributing a good number of the community applications. Sander Sweers and Stefano Karapetsas for welcoming me to the MATE Team and helping me out on IRC.

Now that the MATE 1.6 packages are in good shape I will start the process of getting MATE into the official Arch Linux repositories. You can help with that by voting for MATE packages in the AUR.