Hi, folks. I recently pre-ordered an MNT Reform Next, and I have a quick question. The product page lists 3 specific desktops. Is there any reason that I wouldn’t be able to use Mate? That’s what I’ve been using happily on Debian for years. Thanks!
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Hi @pacavegano and welcome to the Forum!
No, there is no reason why Mate should not work. I read that they added wayland support with mate 1.26 which is a relatively recent release. Maybe there are still a few rough edges with Mate on Wayland because of that. Would you like me to try out Mate on my RK3588 (the same chip in the Reform Next). I think mate-desktop should be the right meta package.
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Hi, @josch and thanks for the welcome, and for your response! No, no need to test it (unless you are curious). I couldn’t think of any reason why it wouldn’t work, but the fact that three specific desktop environments were mentioned as available (among the many that are commonly used) made me wonder.
I’m currently trying this out and am wondering: which login manager are you using together with mate? gdm or something else?
Thanks, @josch. It appears that I am using lightdm. I did not install it explicitly, so I assume it is what is installed when mate is the only desktop chosen during installation.
It is not. The right meta-package is mate-desktop-environment.
I have just read this:
One of the most notable improvements is the enhanced support for Wayland, bringing us closer to a fully native MATE-Wayland experience.
Unfortunately, Debian does not yet have mate 1.28 packaged completely and the blog post above sounds that “fully native” is not done yet either. On the other hand, this is a blog post from February 2024 which is nearly 2 years ago so maybe there will be a new release soon? I’m not familiar with MATE and do not know how active the community is around keeping gnome 2 alive for a bit longer.
Nevertheless I tried installing mate on my rk3588 reform and many programs just simply segfault. No surprise because many pieces are still only version 1.26. If you have time, maybe you can become involved with the Debian MATE packaging team and help package MATE 1.28?
Thanks for looking into this. I’ll take a look at what’s going on with Mate. In the meantime, I did a fresh install on my test laptop today, and included KDE Plasma to test. I’ve used KDE in the past, and didn’t hate it, but it’s been a few years. I should look into Sway, too. I had never even heard of that until I saw it listed as a desktop for the MNT Reform Next.