Salix MATE 13.37beta1

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gapan
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Salix MATE 13.37beta1

Post by gapan »

Here is the first beta release of our new Salix edition, using the MATE Desktop Environment. For anyone not familiar with MATE, it's a GNOME2 fork, that continues development of the GNOME 2.x branch. MATE uses the traditional desktop metaphor that was abandoned for newer GNOME 3.x releases. There was a lot of work involved by the MATE developers with forking MATE and most issues that appeared due to forking have been ironed out. The desktop experience provided by the MATE Desktop should now be on par with that of GNOME 2.32.x, with the added advantage that MATE is actually actively developed.

All of the GNOME parts that have been forked have been renamed, so that they don't conflict with GNOME 3.x applications, but otherwise the functionality and behavior is exactly the same as it was in GNOME 2.32.x. For example, the Nautilus file manager is now named Caja in MATE, the Evince document viewer is now Atril and the File-Roller archive manager is now Engrampa. These forked applications will probably play a much bigger part in future Salix versions, for other editions as well, especially if Slackware doesn't decide to move to GTK+3, which is highly unlikely.

Installation from these ISO images is performed using the standard Salix installer. These are not LiveCDs. The installation is identical to that of any other Salix edition and provides the option to make a Core mode installation, a Basic mode installation or a Full mode installation. The Core mode installation is identical to that present in all other Salix editions, it will only install a command line system, no GUI applications or environments. The Basic mode installation will install a very basic system with the MATE Desktop Environment, the Firefox web browser and the collection of Salix system tools, including the Gslapt package manager and Sourcery Slackbuild manager and not much more than that. The MATE Desktop Environment is as minimal as possible in a Basic mode installation, it only includes the Caja file, the MATE preferences tools and a few panel applets. A full mode installation includes everything that is present in the ISO images. That includes a full MATE Desktop Environment with all panel applets, the Atril document viewer, the Engrampa archive manager, the MATE power manager, MATE system utilities and more. The collection of software included in a Full mode installation resembles that of other Salix editions, especially the Xfce edition, including the Libreoffice suite, the Claws-mail emailing application, the Pidgin instant messenger, the GIMP image editor etc. Of course all Salix system tools that make system administration easier are installed, as in all other editions.

It would be great if you could download and test this new Salix MATE edition. You can download the beta1 ISO images from Sourceforge, using the following links:

Salix MATE 13.37beta1 (32-bit):
(size: 618MB, md5: 32cdd2a8f037ebe0bb24d237f564998a)
Sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/salix/f ... o/download

Salix64 MATE 13.37beta1 (64-bit):
(size: 609MB, md5: 7ad0e8574dbd918490e1707df29146ab)
Sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/salix/f ... o/download

Please report any issues, or success stories. We are working closely with the MATE developers and we'll try to fix any issues that might arise before a final release.

Have fun!
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ElderDryas
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Re: Salix MATE 13.37beta1

Post by ElderDryas »

Grabbing the ISO as I type. Hope this beta goes better than LMDE's Cinnamon/MATE UP4/respin iso :)

Edit: Much, much, much better than LMDE's. This beta is actually working as advertised, NOT sort of...maybe...if you're lucky working :)
Last edited by ElderDryas on 12. Apr 2012, 01:47, edited 2 times in total.
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ElderDryas
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Re: Salix MATE 13.37beta1

Post by ElderDryas »

Hope this is the correct place to post observations.

1) Installed correctly from USB stick (made with unetbootin)
2) Upgrade procedure showed no upgrades needed at this time :)
3) nvidia driver 295.40 installed correctly (use the instructions from the wiki)

Hmmmm, I've been using xfce so long I forgot what gnome2 looked like :) It's going to take me a while to get used to this.

Initial observations/opinions:
1) The default apps are (as noted) basically the same as in salix-xfce.
2) Looks like Flash is installed by default, but codecs must be installed via the menu item (as normal).
3) I miss the ability to turn off the touchpad when a usb mouse is plugged in (with the command synclient TouchPadOff=1 placed...hmmm...I forgot what it was called...Remote Devices?)
4) Volumed (or whatever it's called in gnome) appears to enabled by default (as oppsed to salix-xfce), i.e. my mute key works.
5) Htop shows mem usage at initial boot/rest to be about 280mb, as opposed to about 220mb for salix-xfce and the dual core's show about 8-15% usage at rest while xfce showed ~ 2-7% at rest (64 bit)

Overall, first impressions are favorable. I think I'll keep it for a while and see what I can break :)

Edit:
1) There are none of the customary folders (Documents, Public, Download, etc.) in ~. Is this by design?
2) ^^ And there is no user-dirs.dirs in ~/.config
Last edited by ElderDryas on 11. Apr 2012, 19:22, edited 1 time in total.
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zAchAry
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Re: Salix MATE 13.37beta1

Post by zAchAry »

gapan wrote:For example, the Nautilus file manager is now named Caja in MATE, the Evince document viewer is now Atril and the File-Roller archive manager is now Engrampa.
Now it is easy to set a single click for Engrampa.
Caja: Edit > Preferences > Behavior > Single click to open items.
It would be nice if MATE will provide an ability (at compilation options) to integrate the Thunar and PCManFM preferences with Engrampa.
ElderDryas wrote:5) Htop shows mem usage at initial boot/rest to be about 280mb, as opposed to about 220mb for salix-xfce and the dual core's show about 8-15% usage at rest while xfce showed ~ 2-7% at rest (64 bit)
Have you included mate-system-monitor?
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ElderDryas
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Re: Salix MATE 13.37beta1

Post by ElderDryas »

zAchAry wrote:Have you included mate-system-monitor?
No, just htop. I've found that htop appears to use less overhead than the gui monitor versions.

But System Monitor shows the same discrepancy(s) between MATE and xfce.
Last edited by ElderDryas on 11. Apr 2012, 19:28, edited 1 time in total.
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mimosa
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Re: Salix MATE 13.37beta1

Post by mimosa »

Incidentally I was just reading the review of Gnome 4 on Distrowatch (see the thread on the marriage of Salix and Slackware) and found the answer to a question: it's MATE as in two syllables, a sort of tea drunk in southern Brazil, Argentina and probably Uruguay and Paraguay too, and an excellent name - like China tea, the drink is refreshing in a gentle way.

This Spanish wikipedia page has full info, or click on the link to "English":

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilex_paraguariensis

If it were MATE as in chum, pal, etc., one syllable, it would be a pretty terrible name; but I think the green powder isn't that widely known outside the region, so I did wonder. Distrowatch says the MATE dev Perberos is Argentinian.
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caitlyn
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Re: Salix MATE 13.37beta1

Post by caitlyn »

Mimosa is correct. It was originally spelled MATÉ, but I see the accent is missing from the new website.
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mimosa
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Re: Salix MATE 13.37beta1

Post by mimosa »

I am not sure if the accent is normal in Spanish, but I believe it is common in English as a hint about the two syllables and to avoid the ambiguity with mate/copain/Kamarad/amiguinho etc.

EDIT Cf. "Clippy", your flexible helpmate ;)
Adys
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Re: Salix MATE 13.37beta1

Post by Adys »

This post is not a technical one. I apologize in advance for that.

@gapan, please correct the "news" announcement to specify you are releasing a beta1 version. Both the "news" page and in the main page of the web site, the news item says "Salix 13.37 MATE" or something alike, but the title of the news item doesn't mention it is a beta1 release (as the title of this topic indeed says it is, as also in DW).

@All,
For those interested and since it was mentioned already, the name MATE in Spanish has no accent, or if you want, the accent is not to be written. The "second" syllable starting from the end of the word ("MA") is the "strong" one for its correct pronunciation in Spanish. I'm not sure how the general Linux community (accustomed to English words, or French at best) will pronounce it, specially when "mate", "maté" and "matè" are not faithfully representing the Spanish pronunciation (but maybe English or French speakers - as natural language, that is - have a different understanding about English or French respective phonetics).

Again, apologies for the non-technical post.

PS: @gapan it could be useful to mention the expected minimum and recommended hardware requirements in the OP. If that info is currently unknown, then it could be useful to request such feedback info from beta testers (and from the MATE developers).
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Re: Salix MATE 13.37beta1

Post by djemos »

gimp in mate needs some packages to installed and add to melt packages-full list.
They are ilmbase, openexr, libwmf
to see them just run gimp in a xterm.
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