Point is meant for experienced users who know what they're doing. This is a Crunchbang-level of a distro, not another Ubuntu-alike.

Me neither. I couldn't care less about compiz, i said this is an official reason. I'm not affiliated with the distro in any way. Could you point me to a place where i could see some of the security issues MATE 1.4.x has? I'm genuinely interested.

Well, MATE won't get into Debian for the wheezy release, so this really doesn't apply.

Read the message #137 in the link you posted:
"...I'd like to remind everyone, especially those considering devoting their time to packaging MATE in Debian, that Josselin Mouette is only expressing his opinions in a personal capacity. Ultimately, packages are included or excluded from Debian based on the guidelines expressed in the Debian Policy Manual. The responsibility for interpreting those guidelines falls on members of the ftp-master, who have the thankless job of processing packages in the NEW queue. As such, any package that follows those guidelines should be accepted into Debian, regardless of any philosophical misgivings that individual Debian developers may express on the ITP thread."

The "old tech & duplicates" argument was just a personal opinion of Gnome3 maintainer, and many of them were refuted by MATE folk in that thread.

And in the message #162:
"Changes:
mate-common (1.5.2-1) experimental; urgency=low
.
* New upstream development release.
* debian/copyright: Add list of gnome-common copyright holders, generated
using a custom python script and python-git module on git gnome-common
history until 2011.
* First upload to Debian (Closes: 658783)."

That is the change that closes this bug. So i understand it that there were some minor licencing issues Debian is so picky about.

An experienced user who knows what they are doing is more likely to install Debian and then MATE on top without installing some distro that uses obsoleted packages.

You would have to do a search for that or ask someone who maintains it for a distro and has had to patch it.

This looks as though you are saying Wheezy is still Testing. Wheezy has been (past tense) released already but that does not stop anyone from installing MATE on Wheezy. I myself have it on a few machines with Wheezy. MATE packages are in the official Debian Jessie repository and many are in New just waiting for approval to move to Experimental or Sid.

Emphasis added by me to show why Debian accepted MATE for packaging!

That MATE package had been packaged for so Debian it was accepted for packaging. As with anything in Debian there are steps to follow and one step after MATE had been accepted for packaging was missed. This in no way indicates that MATE was kept out of Debian because of a licensing issue rather it indicates Debian was requiring the packager of MATE (in that case probably Stefano) to comply fully with the Debian guidelines even after being accepted. The point is MATE had been approved by that stage but a mistake had been made and that package (and any others with the same error) were required to be repackaged.

Hey, i used to run kwin in a xfce4 and Mate session, as well. I stopped though because for some reason, when using kwin in those sessions, (or Gnome fallback) I found that the menus tared. do you encounter this at all?

IMO experienced user is able to decide for himself.

Yes but Point is based on Debian Wheezy, so what is in Jessie doesn't matter. The point is that the upgrade doesn't come through, unless you upgrade from Point to (vanilla-Debian) Jessie, which is nonsense. And if you upgrade your Pointlinux from MATE 1.4 to 1.6, you ought to know what you're doing.


So i was totally wrong here, thanks for clarifying.

I agree so why force old unsupported versions on them?

So you're suggesting that because it is Debian Wheezy it must stay at MATE 1.4 even though the current version of MATE for Wheezy is 1.6? That just doesn't make any sense. Add the official MATE repository to the sources.list and have the advantage of MATE 1.6 and also know it is fully supported unlike MATE 1.4 which I doubt anyone but LinuxMint is supporting. Can you confirm that PointLinux is supporting MATE 1.4 if there is any security issues? Can you confirm they have the manpower to deal with any security issues? The last sentence is back to front, instead of knowing what you are doing if you update from 1.4 to 1.6 Point users need to know what to do using 1.4 because until you or anyone from Point Linux can confirm otherwise Point Linux users are on their own with regards to any bugs or security issues that may crop up.

You're welcome.

I have to say I am concerned at your willingness, and the apparent willingness of PointLinux, to expose people to possible problems through using unsupported software just so they can use Compiz. It is similar to people continuing using Windows XP after support is finished.

Change happens - especially in Linux.
Gnome 3 took some getting used to, but that is old news now. Haven't tried Mate (time to leave Gnome 2 behind IMHO), but Cinnamon has been well accepted by the lady of the house - not sure of its status on Debian .Erk - haven't even thought about that in years; even Solaris went to Gnome ...

All this fuss & bother about Gnome mutations!?!
Get KDE and live happily ever after.

Each to their own, that is why we have choice.
It is starting to come through in Sid.

I know when I first installed kwin, I was getting alot of wonky things going on, like my window decorator bugging out, and kwin would work, but wouln't work, which I resolved it be deleting the .cache file and it works flawlessly now. The only problem with it, its a real resource hog, but I have enough computer to handle it.

1 members found this post helpful.

Tnx all for the replies.

I"ve installed MATE 1.6 on my debian wheezy, and so far it's all smooth sailing.

Again, there's no forcing, as upgrade is easy.

I understand your concern for security, and it is indeed valid. I personally believe the user (the system admin) should have the right (and responsibility) to make these decisions for himself. Security is a process, and if we were after 100% security, we wouldn't run any GUI. So yes, from my POV it's no big deal - if you want 1.6 you just upgrade (and get there much faster than from vanilla Debian), if you don't care, you can stay 1.4. I never had any issues with 1.4, and i never heard about any. Let's face it, it is mostly years-old and proven Gnome2 code. We apparently won't agree on this, so i rest my case.

KDE is a BUFF (Big Ugly Fat F*cker)

Gnome 3 is a soup sammich

Mate is 2 i.e. a dead end street

I like and use Cinnamon but that is reliant on Clem and the LM folks

It's time for some new non cartoonish (looking at you e17) full DE's

Oh nooooos, Chris went down that road!

Personally i like many of the desktop environments available for Gnu/Linux. My favorite is Kde. Kde uses a shell (like Gnome) called the Plasma Desktop. One very clear difference between the Kde shell and Gnome's is that Kde's window manager, Kwin can be switched out and the shell will work with another one quite well too. the Gnome shell is dependent on it's window manager mutter (maybe swappable for muffin). If Mutter is replaced by marco, or xfwm4, or something else, the shell will stop working. I consider this a loss of functionality.
I don't exactly know what you mean by kde being a 'Big Ugly Fat F*cker', the resources consumed by both desktop environments has been compared and KDE consumes less, and that's with full desktop effects enabled. If kwin is switched with something like Openbox, or Xfwm4, i'd imagine the resource consumption would be less again.

Mate isn't a dead end street. I don't need to say why, because supportive points that show cear potential for Mate's future have already been post; did you even read the thread?

"I like and use Cinnamon"
This is another remark that leaves me dumbfounded.
Previously you'd said this;
"Gnome 3 is a soup sammich"
Cinnamon relies on Gnome! If Gnome is a soup sandwich, Cinnamon is the drizzle, oozing out the sides.


A lot of people don't consider Lxde, or Xfce. There is a belief that these desktop environments are minimal and sacrifice functionality. I have not tested Lxde enough to be honest, but i find that this belief couldn't be further from the truth with Xfce4. Xfce is very modular, and it gets brownie points for that in my book. The desktop is managed by xfdesktop, instead of its file manager, like Gnome/Cinnamon/Mate. This is great because it means if i want to use a different file manager, it is easy to remove Xfce's Thunar. Xfce4 also doesn't use a shell, like Gnome/Cinnamon/Kde, which is awesome because if i desire to use parts of it like it's panel, in a different desktop environment, i can.
Xfce4, really is awesome, if you haven't tried it, i highly suggest it.

I've been using Xfce since I abandoned Gnome, and I like it. I just wish I'd gone to it much sooner.

I've been using Cinnamon , compiled from git source ( on Debian Jessie/sid )

it can get a little 'bogged' down , seems to consume a lot of memory over time
but alt+f2 --> r<enter> and mem use is back down.

I'm not certain of cinnamon's current status in Debian, I think the last version I had from Debian's repos was 1.7

I like Cinnamon, interface is more akin to Gnome2, but with the new gnome3 applets/desklets and other 'bling'

if Cinnamon were not in the picture then I would opt for Mate,. with limited hardware/resources xfce or lxde

kde4 is 'ok' , I put up with it on Slackware / Freebsd
but in all honesty, I dislike the interface

'way back' I disliked gnome and favoured kde2
switched to gnome2 when kde3 was getting way to laggy for me
kde4 seems to have addressed that ( at least Slackware and Freebsd packaged kde4 runs well )
but like I said, I'm not too keen on the interface.



but this kind of thing is always subjective
best option is to try them all, ( or most ) and give them a good go, ( at least a day or two )