For MATE users, Debian and Ubuntu are finally migrating this desktop environment to version 1.28 for Debian Testing (Forky) and Ubuntu 26.04 LTS.
MATE, the continuation of GNOME 2, is a popular lightweight desktop environment for Linux. The latest version is MATE 1.28 which was released more than a year and a half ago in February 2024.
MATE 1.28 in Ubuntu MATE 26.04
What’s New in MATE 1.28
In case you don’t know or forget about the release, MATE 1.28 introduced experimental Wayland session using Wayfire.
It updated several core components, such as file manager, mate-applets, and control center, to work seamlessly with Wayland. And, it updated the codebase to ensure compatibility with the latest GTK versions.
Other changes include:
- Support reading epub via Atril document viewer.
- Use unar instead of cpio for CPIO archives, and support unrar-free for the archive manager.
- Add new Quickhighlight plugin for pluma text editor.
- Add new plugin to view the exact properties of media files in file manager.
- Mouse middle-click support for mate-indicator-applet.
- Double click to set mate-terminal tab title.
- Add OSC 8 hyperlinks support for mate terminal.
For more about MATE 1.28, see the official release note.
Why MATE 1.28 is NOT available in current Ubuntu & Debian 13 Trixie
The MATE desktop packages for Debian and Ubuntu in the past 10 years are mostly maintained by Mike Gabriel.
However, due to lack of time and two problems he said in the MATE 1.28, the migration delayed:
The problem is indeed an ENOTIME (haven’t had time for it) early enough before the trixie freeze.
I started packaging stuff, but noticed two problems:
* mate-desktop (libmate-desktop-…) removed symbols without an SOVERSION_MAJOR bump. I started bringing back the removed symbols but that was not a trivial task and I ended up discouraged as this is a major upstream flaw of the 1.28 version of libmate-desktop and it needs to be fixed there.
* mate-settings-daemon’s behaviour on DBus is broken, breaking e.g. arctica-greeterSo, Trixie will come with MATE 1.26 and I will put some effort into bumping it to 1.28 after the trixie release.
Unless someone else steps up and pushes MATE 1.28 in (but please resolve the above issues sanely). If it needs more feedback and details, I can provide them.
Thankfully, Jeremy Bícha took up the task in last week and submitted MATE desktop 1.28 into Debian unstable. Then, it’s migrated to Debian Forky and backported for Ubuntu 26.04 LTS (so far available as pre-release updates) few days ago.
NOTE: So far only few of MATE 1.28 components are migrated. As 26.04 is in very early stage, things may change! See this page to track the mate-desktop package for Debian, and see the package for Ubuntu.
