Ubuntu MATE 19.04 Ubuntu and its family of community editions were updated just over a week ago with the releases of version 19.04. The new set of releases ship with version 5.0 of the Linux kernel and receive just nine months of support.



A few weeks ago we ran a poll asking which member of the Ubuntu family should be the focus on this review and the winner (on the day the new version came out), by a thin margin, was Canonical's main edition, Ubuntu itself. Ubuntu 19.04 ships with GNOME 3.32 which provides fractional scaling for the GNOME desktop along with using Python 3 as the default version of the Python language. The Alt-Tab behaviour has been changed to switch between windows instead of applications by default and there is a "safe graphics mode" available through the GRUB boot menu. These days Ubuntu and its community flavours use a merged-usr filesystem on fresh installs, consolidating executable files and libraries under the /usr directory. Otherwise not much has changed in the desktop edition of Ubuntu for this release.



I downloaded Ubuntu's 2GB ISO file and soon ran into two problems. The first was Ubuntu was unusually slow to boot, taking several minutes to get up and running. The second was the GNOME desktop was painfully slow to respond to input. During the flood of Ubuntu releases I had a chance to boot all eight flavours and found only Ubuntu and Ubuntu Kylin shared these performance issues. These problems have been reported elsewhere so I suspect this may be a driver-related issue. While these problems may be possible to trouble-shoot and may be fixed quickly, they made reviewing Ubuntu in a reasonable time frame difficult.



The next most popular distribution in our poll was Kubuntu, but I briefly reviewed it about a month ago and (apart from shipping a slightly newer version of Plasma) it doesn't look like much has changed since then. In fact, almost nothing new is listed in the release announcement, apart from a few minor package updates. Which brought me to the third most popular poll option: Ubuntu MATE.



Ubuntu MATE is provided through a 1.9GB ISO and is available for 64-bit (x86_64) machines and GPD Pocket computers. At a glance it looks like other architectures and platforms are supported on the Ubuntu MATE download page, but those links are for older versions of the distribution.





Ubuntu MATE 19.04 -- The welcome window

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Like most of the other community flavours, Ubuntu MATE's list of changes for 19.04 is pretty conservative. The team is intentionally shipping an older version of the MATE desktop, for instance (1.20 instead of 1.22) for stability reasons. The two big features are support for GPD Pocket computers and Remote Desktop Awareness (RDA). The project's release announcement explains RDA: " Our MATE Desktop 1.20 packages ship with patches to support Remote Desktop Awareness (RDA). RDA makes MATE Desktop more aware of its execution context so that it behaves differently when run inside a remote desktop session compared to when running on local hardware. Different remote technology solutions support different features and they can now be queried from within MATE components. The inclusion of RDA offers the option to suspend your remote connection; supports folder sharing in Caja; MIME type bindings for SSHFS shares and allows session suspension via the MATE screensaver. "



Installing



When booting from the Ubuntu MATE media in a virtual machine the system brings up a graphical window which asks us to select our preferred language from a list and then choose to try the live desktop or start the install process. At first I tried the live desktop and found MATE to be responsive and the distribution appeared to be working properly. We can then launch the installer from the live desktop or reboot to start the install process. When running Ubuntu MATE's live media on a physical workstation, the distribution simply boots directly into the live desktop without asking for my preferred language or if I would like to install the operating system.



The distribution uses Ubiquity as the system installer. Ubiquity has not changed much in recent years and the graphical installer does a good job of guiding us through easy to navigate screens. Early on we are asked whether we should perform a Normal or Minimal install. The former places packages for several desktop applications on our hard drive while the Minimal option installs MATE and a web browser, but little else. We can also decide whether to install third-party drivers and codecs, which I did.



Ubiquity offers guided and manual partitioning. I took the manual option which was straight forward to use and supports setting up Ubuntu MATE on an ext2/3/4, Btrfs, JFS or XFS filesystem. I went with the Btrfs option with the hopes of using snapshots and other convenient features. The installer also asks us to select our keyboard layout, time zone and to make up a username and password for ourselves. Ubiquity worked quickly and I was soon able to reboot and begin playing with my new copy of the distribution.



Early impressions



Ubuntu MATE boots to a green-themed graphical login screen. From there we can sign into our user account and start using the MATE desktop. The desktop is arranged with a two-panel layout. The application menu and system tray are placed at the top of the display and the task switcher is located at the bottom. As soon as we sign in a welcome window appears. The welcome screen offers overviews of Linux and the Ubuntu MATE distribution. There are buttons provided which open the software centre (called Software Boutique) and a separate tool that just installs popular web browsers with a click. The available browsers are Chromium, Chrome, Vivaldi, Opera, Brave and Firefox. The browsers are presented without explanation or tips on why we might use one over the other.





Ubuntu MATE 19.04 -- Trying to connect to the chat room

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The welcome screen also features links to the project's resources and includes a button to connect us with the project's IRC chatroom. Clicking the chatroom button opens Firefox and the browser attempts to connect us with the chatroom through the Kiwi IRC web client. I tried to use the chatroom four times over the first two days I was using Ubuntu MATE and the connection always failed. It's not a good omen when a project's support resource does not work.



Software management



I would like to return to the subject of Ubuntu MATE's software manager. The Software Boutique application can be launched from the welcome window, the application menu or the settings panel. The Boutique displays icons for categories of software across the top of its window and clicking these icons brings up an alphabetically sorted list of desktop applications. Each program is listed with its icon and a short description. We can click a button next to a program's entry to add it to the download queue. New items are not downloaded until we confirm we want to process the queue, then we are asked to provide our password before Boutique will install the selected software.





Ubuntu MATE 19.04 -- The Software Boutique

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The first time I used Boutique it appeared as though the interface locked up once my queue of items had been installed. It turned out I had to click a button confirming software had finished downloading before I could move on and select more programs to install.



Boutique worked well and quickly and I did not encounter any real problems. I would have preferred if software categories had been labelled with text rather than simple graphics as I did not immediately recognize some categories by their icons. Something else I noticed was Boutique is only set up to install desktop applications, and not even all of those. Games and some programs, like Timeshift, do not turn up in searches. If we want more software that Boutique cannot find, Software Boutique does include a category specifically for installing other software managers, specifically GNOME Software and Synaptic.



I'd like to share a few other observations on software management. Ubuntu MATE ships with a simple graphical update manager. This tool simply lists available updates and installs them. I had no problems with this tool and it worked well. For fans of the command line we can use the APT package management tools. Ubuntu MATE ships with the Snap framework for running Snap bundles. In fact, I believe at least two programs, the welcome window and Software Boutique, are Snap packages. Flatpak can be installed from the distribution's repositories, but is not available out of the box. Finally, I think it is worth mentioning the distribution enables the Ubuntu Backports repository by default, meaning desktop software is likely to get updated over the short (nine month) span of the distribution's supported life.



Hardware



I experimented with Ubuntu MATE in a VirtualBox environment and on a physical workstation. In both environments the distribution ran well. All of my workstation's hardware was detected and used without problems. When running in VirtualBox, Ubuntu MATE integrated with the virtual machine and could use my screen's full resolution. The distribution took a little longer to shutdown than usual when running in VirtualBox, but otherwise I encountered no hardware-related problems.



I found the distribution used about 400MB of RAM when signed into the MATE desktop and the operating system consumed 6GB of disk space following a Normal install.



Applications



Ubuntu MATE ships with a familiar collection of popular desktop applications, including Firefox, Thunderbird and Transmission. LibreOffice is included along with the Atril document viewer and the MATE Dictionary. The Shotwell photo manager and Eye of MATE image viewer are included too. There is a simple scanning utility, archive manager and calculator included too. Backup archives can be created and restored through Deja Dup, which I find pleasantly straight forward to use.



The distribution includes the Cheese webcam tool, the Brasero disc burning software, the VLC media player and the Rhythmbox audio player. We have the option of installing media codecs through Ubiquity and I was able to play media files out of the box. The gufw utility is provided for setting up a firewall. The distribution ships with the MATE help documentation and an Additional Drivers tool for installing third-party hardware drivers. Redshift is provided to make our screens more pleasant to look at in the evenings.





Ubuntu MATE 19.04 -- Adjusting the look of the desktop with Ubuntu Tweak

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Digging further we find the GNU Compiler Collection is installed and systemd provides Ubuntu MATE's init implementation. Behind the scenes we find version 5.0 of the Linux kernel. Generally speaking, the included applications worked well for me. I found I did not need to install many extra tools and the provided programs were both functional and easy to use.



Errors and issues



During my time with Ubuntu MATE I ran into a number of errors and small problems, most of them occurring in the first day or two of use. The second time I logged into the desktop the Brisk menu immediate crashed, causing a pop-up letting me know and its process had to be restarted. The first time the screensaver came on, I pressed keys and moved the mouse and nothing happened. The screen remained blank. I had to switch to a text console and stop the screensaver manually and then switch back to the desktop session to get back to MATE.



A few times during the first day error messages popped-up saying an internal error had occurred and asking if a crash report should be sent to the developers.



Though perhaps a design choice rather than a bug, I was disappointed to find that despite not wanting any swap space enabled, Ubuntu MATE automatically created a swap file for me on the root partition. The file is about 700MB in size. This is a potential problem for three reasons. First, the swap file takes up the better part of a gigabyte and that is space I wanted to use for something else. Second, the swap file is not enabled, meaning that even if RAM did fill up, I still would not have swap space to use. The file is taking up space without providing any benefit. Third, I chose to install on a Btrfs volume and the documentation relating to Linux swap space goes out of its way to repeatedly point out swap files do not work properly with Btrfs prior to Linux 5.0 and only work under specific configurations that are not applicable to Ubuntu MATE with Linux 5.0 and newer. In other words, if I did enable the swap file manually in order to use it, it is likely my data would get corrupted as a result.



Settings



Ubuntu MATE includes a central settings panel which is filled with useful modules for customizing the operating system and the MATE desktop. Most of the settings are pretty standard and allow us to change the look of the desktop, create firewall rules and manage printers. These modules all worked well for me and were pleasantly boring.





Ubuntu MATE 19.04 -- The settings panel and firewall rules

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A couple of settings I did find interesting were in the Windows and MATE Tweak modules. Going into the Windows module opens up window manager settings and these helped me improve MATE's performance, particularly when compositing was disabled. The MATE Tweak tool offers some useful features too, such as moving window control buttons and enabling the HUD.



The HUD, which previously got a lot of attention back when Ubuntu was using the Unity 7 desktop by default, allows the user to press a button (typically the left Alt key) to open a search window that lets us type the name of the menu item we want to access in the active application. For instance, if I want to change the character colour in LibreOffice, with the HUD I do not need to remember if colours are set under the Format or Styles menus. I tap "Alt" and type "character" and the appropriate menu item is selected, with related options shown in the search box. The HUD does not work with all applications, Firefox refused to work with the HUD for instance, but most programs I tried did work and this made navigating applications with large menus easier to use. I would like to see more desktops enable a HUD.





Ubuntu MATE 19.04 -- Using the HUD with LibreOffice

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Earlier I mentioned installing Ubuntu MATE on a Btrfs volume. While the distribution does not ship with Timeshift, the snapshotting program is available in the repositories and works with the distribution's Btrfs volume layout. This makes it wonderfully easy to automatically take snapshots of our files at regular intervals and restore deleted or overwritten files later. I was happy to see how smoothly the distribution ran on the advanced filesystem and hope the developers lower the bar to creating snapshots in future releases.





Ubuntu MATE 19.04 -- Making snapshots with Timeshift

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Conclusions



When I began using Ubuntu MATE my trial started off well. The live environment worked smoothly and the Ubiquity installer performed as expected. However, during my first day or two with the distribution, I ran into a number of problems. I was unable to connect with the IRC support channel, the distribution gobbled up disk space with a swap file I didn't want, and I ran into a number of crashes that affected either the interface or the underlying operating system. In short, for the first day or two I was frustrated with Ubuntu MATE and by my initial impressions of Ubuntu itself.



However, my opinion of the distribution warmed over the course of the week. MATE is wonderfully snappy and I like its theme. The project ships with a lot of top-notch applications which make getting to work very easy. I like that the MATE Tweak tool let me arrange the desktop the way I wanted and the HUD is a joy to use.



One of my few lingering issues was with Software Boutique. This software manager seems geared toward beginners who will only want to install a few items, but it does not scale up well and cannot install command line tools, some desktop software and some games. Which means we will almost certainly need to install at least one other software manager to get all the tools we want.



In the end, I feel Ubuntu MATE is doing a lot of things well. The overall design is good and I think newcomers will especially appreciate this distribution. However, there are a handful of bugs and little design problems that should be addressed before the next long-term support release which is due a year from now. * * * * * Hardware used in this review



My physical test equipment for this review was a desktop HP Pavilon p6 Series with the following specifications: Processor: Dual-core 2.8GHz AMD A4-3420 APU

Storage: 500GB Hitachi hard drive

Memory: 6GB of RAM

Networking: Realtek RTL8111 wired network card, Ralink RT5390R PCIe Wireless card

Display: AMD Radeon HD 6410D video card * * * * * Visitor supplied rating



Ubuntu MATE has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.9/10 from 241 review(s).

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