Suggestion: include MATE in official Slackware
 

I have a suggestion: include the MATE desktop environment in the official Slackware distribution. I've been using MATE 1.8 on Slackware64 14.1 for a few weeks now, and I even installed it on some of my client's machines. So far, I can tell it's at least as solid and functional as Xfce or KDE. Everything works neatly without getting in the way, and the codebase also seems healthy, something like "GNOME done right". It's currently being adopted by more and more distributions and growing more and more popular. So I think it deserves its official home in Slackware also.

In the meantime, Willy's and Chess' repo is working great.

Cheers,

Niki

While this might be an interesting suggestion, personally i would like to keep MATE out of Slackware official repository and let it be a side-project that build and install cleanly on top of Slackware Linux. I don't want to add more burden to Pat to manage growing dependencies on every release, so i think as long as the base foundation (Slackware Linux) provides the basic requirements (apps and libraries) that can met the requirement for MATE releases, it's already a big help for us in MSB project.

Again, this is my own opinion and it does not represent Chess' opinion.

MATE is nice enough but I would personally agree with willysr. Maintaining Slackware is already a pretty big job, not least with all the changes coming from the self named Core OS guys. Best to have Pat focus on the base and already included applications. Others can layer stuff on top.

Yes I agree, it would be great to have MATE included in the official release.

Is the maintenance hell solved in MATE? That means can a single person starting with only the source tarballs integrate the thing into a distribution within a reasonable time frame?

I just looked at http://mate-desktop.org/install/, but this is enduser-oriented and distribution-specific. Where do I look for build and update instructions as maintainer of my own distribution?
Impressive! And external dependencies? Trial and error? Reverse engineering other distributions and their build scripts? MATE still has the same problem GNOME had. Just look how well documented the KDE build process is.

The maintainability of a software is what counts here, not how often the end-user requests it.

I thought that chess and willysr took on the MATE project in response to this comment.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...9/#post4799721

Slackware used to have Gnome until it became too difficult to support. I think that volkerdi would like to be able to offer an alternative if stability and demand are there.

Personally, I have never been keen on the Gnome look and feel, but MATE has piqued my interest, just not to the point that I have actually tried it.

So far, we have been able to keep the dependencies maintainable since most of them are already available in SBo. There are that not yet in SBo, but it's easily be created once you know the basic idea.

You know, KDE is a very MATURE project. It existed since a long time ago and MATE is just a baby born project. Give it some time and hopefully they will have a proper documentation. So far, the only active developers are not more than 5 people. Compared to KDE, which has more than hundreds of developers around the world.

a little correction. Chess was the initial creator of MSB project. Later on, i joined and continue the project along with him

Slackware, is a wonderful project. It provides plenty of versatility of DE and WM, and this community provides the additional support for anyone who is trying to use another DE or WM, like enlightenment or FVWM-Cyrstal (which also have their own support areas). I think MATE should be maintained as is Slacke17, e18, an alternative DE that can be installed with simple instructions, but not part of the base. My bigger concern is will MATE bring in all the dependencies it implies for all GNOME based applications, as Slackware does in its base for KDE. Otherwise, the uninformed will install MATE and then wonder why their GNUCash isn't working when they install it, and still be run away from Slackware when they hear they need to install the dependencies themselves. (PS I'm sure GNUCash is only one example of a large dependency queue if building yourself and I don't mean to pick on GNUCash because I use it for small business accounting). So let's keep MATE standalone and not try to chase the people going to other distributions for simple point-n-click OS ease, they have plenty of distributions to choose from for that ability.

Including MSB in Slackware would mean transferring responsibility for maintaining it from Chess and Willysr to Pat. There's that issue to consider.

MATE imho is the closest thing Linux world has to fully comfortable and professional desktop environment. Everything is clean, tidy and works fast and well. So from Slackware users point of view, it would make sense to ditch xfce for MATE and call it a day.

However, if I think more like Slackware enthusiast, then I would prefer separate MSB project, as Willy and Chess are obviously more passionate about their work, so I get to enjoy frequent updates, quality packages, extremely fast support and so on. I am not trying to say Patrick would make inferior job here, but I (as a enthusiast) would be stuck with the same MATE version for entire Slackware year (not entirely bad thing, but for a enthusiast - boring) :)

I will throw in a vote to eventually include Mate in Slackware proper. Mate uses about the same resources as Xfce. and is easier on older hardware than most of the other desktops.

If Slackware proper is not palatable then /extra. If not /extra then SBo. If not SBo then easy download support with slackpkg+ from whomever maintains the packages.

I seem to recall Pat sharing he would provide internal structural support for Mate so seems we are half way there anyway. As long as the packages are available without the need for local compilation then we're off to a good start. I think packages should be available for 14.0 as well as 14.1 and Current, although I don't expect Pat to backport packages into 14.0 or 14.1.

Adding Mate as an officially supported desktop by a major distro likely would go far toward improving developer interest as well.

I don't envision a problem for Willy and Chess if Pat pulls Mate into Slackware. Right now Robbie does much of the grunt work for Xfce and Eric much of the grunt work for KDE. I would imagine Chess and Willy would continue being the "grunts" for Mate. :)

MSB binaries are compatible with slackpkg+ configuration already
Please read the docs here: http://www.slackware.org.uk/msb/MSB_SLACKPKG+

http://www.microlinux.fr/mled_installation.php

Scroll down to the section "Installing MATE":

It can't get much easier.

Well, you skipped a step or two, but okay. :)

I see the 14.0 version is Mate 1.6 and 14.1 is 1.8. I don't have the time to update to Slackware 14.1. Bummer. :(