Question about xfce and mate

cisneros · 06-16-2013, 11:13 PM

I was just wondering, when gnome was dropped out of the current releases made sense, it was moving slow and had a lot of problems, but now MATE is growing fast and it is really stable, any chances of MATE been in upcoming releases by default? or maybe xfce can be replaced by it.

im looking forward for your opinions.

jprzybylski · 06-16-2013, 11:53 PM

Erm... Doubtful, I would think. KDE and XFCE fill two separate purposes in Slackware - one is the full-featured, powerful desktop environment and one is more minimalist and efficient in nature. MATE would not do as well as XFCE at being a full desktop environment for computers with few resources.

Possibly a more practical reason is that MATE would consume more space than XFCE. MATE also brings in a lot of dependencies that don't exist in Slackware currently.

MATE is still available to install - the folks over at Salix have some packages that also work on a Slackware installation here.

kikinovak · 06-17-2013, 12:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jprzybylski

MATE would not do as well as XFCE at being a full desktop environment for computers with few resources.

Possibly a more practical reason is that MATE would consume more space than XFCE. MATE also brings in a lot of dependencies that don't exist in Slackware currently.

MATE is still available to install - the folks over at Salix have some packages that also work on a Slackware installation here.

There's a bunch of wrong assertions here. And here's your best address for MATE:

http://mateslackbuilds.github.io/

cisneros · 06-17-2013, 12:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jprzybylski

MATE would not do as well as XFCE at being a full desktop environment for computers with few resources.

I installed MATE and i runs as fast as Xfce without the compositing enabled but it has better support for gtk themes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jprzybylski

MATE also brings in a lot of dependencies that don't exist in Slackware currently

that cant be true the only things i can think are some gtk engines for themes, dconf and liunique, and dconf is already in slackware. the other pkgs are the base for mate.
but maybe i'm wrong.

jprzybylski · 06-17-2013, 02:08 AM

Quote:

There's a bunch of wrong assertions here.

Well, ok, I suppose I should explain my reasoning a bit:

Quote:

MATE would not do as well as XFCE at being a full desktop environment for computers with few resources.

Looks like I am genuinely wrong here - I was under the impression that XFCE needed less resources (space, memory) than MATE, but it appears to be not so, or at least not enough to make a big difference.

Quote:

Possibly a more practical reason is that MATE would consume more space than XFCE. MATE also brings in a lot of dependencies that don't exist in Slackware currently.

I guess I should do a bit more research before posting (whoops), but the MATE slackbuilds still pull in 9 dependencies before the actual MATE packages. 9's not that big a number, but that was where I was coming from.

Quote:

MATE is still available to install - the folks over at Salix have some packages that also work on a Slackware installation here.

Didn't realize that they had a site up and everything yet. Looks pretty slick!

Totoro-kun · 06-17-2013, 02:21 AM

Good day,

As someone who uses Mate (From mate slackbuilds) a lot I could share my experience. In my personal opinion, Gnome 2 had probably the best desktop as far as usability and user productivity is concerned, however, it also suffered a lot of problems in various areas. Most notably it depended on a lot of stuff that no one else used. Had some rather nice features, that never worked right due to bugs (facebook panel addon and screen saver comes to mind, but there were many more). Also I remember a lot of performance issues (some due to slow hardware of the time, some due to bad programming). So I waited for each release hoping they will get it together one day and so may prayers got answered by Mate!

It is lovely how they managed to keep all the functionality, while switching many dependencies to more standard stuff. And also it works faster and in a much less buggy way. But Is it worth to replace XFCE in Slackware releases? I think not yet (maybe in a future). Because it's still kind of fresh project if compared to KDE or Xfce and it still has some manners to learn as some parts of it still tends to misbehave (but it's getting there fast).

Most notably Caja computer:/ not always likes to show drives and media that are attached to your PC (and if it does, then you cant access them), there are difficulties with dual monitor setups and panel bugs relating to that (your panel items gets messed up when you connect 2nd monitor). Panel notifications likes to mess up icons of qt or gtk2apps (gtk3 support is somewhat non existent). Not all supplementary programs that gnome 2 had are available to mate (I miss mail client the most), etc. So as you see, Xfce might not have such polished environment, but what it does have - works right.

To sum it up, Mate to me is the most wonderful thing that could happen in Linux Gui word, but it has to grow and I love watching it grow! If everything will go like it's going now, we could expect Mate to be one of the biggest (and best) desktop environments in a near future (maybe few more releases). But for now, it's better to do do our work quietly (get mate from MSB and support them with testing and feedback) then one day we might see it in Slack installation menu.

bartgymnast · 06-17-2013, 05:31 AM

Totoro, I am not sure if MATE will become big.
Yes currently it has lots of good things.
If I am not mistaken, MATE is a fork of Gnome 2.
so they depend heavily on GTK+2, alot of code is still same as gnome2 code
Even tho there are still minor updates (bug fixes) for GTK+2, its not heavily developed.
At some point MATE will find itself to the limitations of GTK+2 and needs to go a seperate way.

1 of the reasons XFCE is currently not releasing anything, is because they also depend on alot of gnome things,
and trying to port to GTK+3.

MATE is good for now, the question is for how long.

stormtracknole · 06-17-2013, 05:48 AM

I think the latest version has support for gtk3.

willysr · 06-17-2013, 06:07 AM

GTK+3 support should be for MATE 1.8
See their Roadmap

willysr · 06-17-2013, 06:33 AM

Judging by the number of dependencies, it's true that it may add several new dependencies, but if you look at the size of the dependencies, it's relatively small.. Take a look on the repository for binary packages size

chess · 06-17-2013, 10:40 AM

Here are all the packages in MSB /base and their sizes:

Code:

chess@slack 11:30 AM ~/slack/mate/x86_64/base $ du -hac *.txz
120K    dconf-0.12.1-x86_64-1_msb.txz
372K    gtk-engines-2.20.2-x86_64-1_msb.txz
140K    libmatekbd-1.6.0-x86_64-1_msb.txz
14M     libmateweather-1.6.1-x86_64-1_msb.txz
364K    libmatewnck-1.6.0-x86_64-1_msb.txz
64K     libunique-1.1.6-x86_64-1_msb.txz
11M     mate-backgrounds-1.6.0-noarch-1_msb.txz
28K     mate-common-1.6.1-x86_64-1_msb.txz
996K    mate-control-center-1.6.0-x86_64-1_msb.txz
284K    mate-desktop-1.6.1-x86_64-1_msb.txz
420K    mate-dialogs-1.6.0-x86_64-1_msb.txz
308K    mate-doc-utils-1.6.1-x86_64-1_msb.txz
2.9M    mate-file-manager-1.6.1-x86_64-1_msb.txz
11M     mate-icon-theme-1.6.0-noarch-1_msb.txz
160K    mate-menus-1.6.0-x86_64-1_msb.txz
88K     mate-notification-daemon-1.6.0-x86_64-1_msb.txz
1.4M    mate-panel-1.6.0-x86_64-1_msb.txz
84K     mate-polkit-1.6.0-x86_64-1_msb.txz
320K    mate-session-manager-1.6.0-x86_64-1_msb.txz
456K    mate-settings-daemon-1.6.0-x86_64-1_msb.txz
2.5M    mate-themes-1.6.1-noarch-1_msb.txz
748K    mate-window-manager-1.6.2-x86_64-1_msb.txz
100K    murrine-0.98.2-x86_64-1_msb.txz
140K    rarian-0.8.1-x86_64-1_msb.txz
47M     total

and here is the same for /extra:

Code:

chess@slack 11:33 AM ~/slack/mate/x86_64/extra $ du -hac *.txz
44K     gksu-2.0.2-x86_64-1_msb.txz
708K    gtksourceview-2.10.5-x86_64-1_msb.txz
80K     libgksu-2.0.12-x86_64-1_msb.txz
196K    libgtop-2.28.4-x86_64-1_msb.txz
104K    libmatekeyring-1.6.0-x86_64-1_msb.txz
2.1M    mate-applets-1.6.1-x86_64-1_msb.txz
476K    mate-calc-1.6.0-x86_64-1_msb.txz
1.3M    mate-character-map-1.6.0-x86_64-1_msb.txz
776K    mate-document-viewer-1.6.0-x86_64-1_msb.txz
572K    mate-file-archiver-1.6.0-x86_64-1_msb.txz
44K     mate-file-manager-gksu-1.6.0-x86_64-1_msb.txz
44K     mate-file-manager-image-converter-1.6.0-x86_64-1_msb.txz
36K     mate-file-manager-open-terminal-1.6.0-x86_64-1_msb.txz
124K    mate-file-manager-sendto-1.6.0-x86_64-1_msb.txz
20M     mate-icon-theme-faenza-1.6.0-noarch-1_msb.txz
660K    mate-image-viewer-1.6.0-x86_64-1_msb.txz
968K    mate-keyring-1.6.0-x86_64-1_msb.txz
368K    mate-media-1.6.0-x86_64-1_msb.txz
96K     mate-menu-editor-1.6.0-x86_64-1_msb.txz
332K    mate-netspeed-1.6.0-x86_64-1_msb.txz
1.3M    mate-power-manager-1.6.1-x86_64-1_msb.txz
104K    mate-sensors-applet-1.6.0-x86_64-1_msb.txz
816K    mate-terminal-1.6.1-x86_64-1_msb.txz
2.0M    mate-text-editor-1.6.0-x86_64-1_msb.txz
1.8M    mate-utils-1.6.0-x86_64-1_msb.txz
35M     total

In /base, dconf is now in -current so that will no longer be a dependency once the next release of Slackware comes out. Anyway, if you wanted to, you could almost cut /base in half by not installing mate-backgrounds (11MB) and mate-icon-theme (11MB). This would get /base down to about 25MB which is pretty small for a GNOME2 style DE. Anything in /extra is, well, extra -- you don't need to install anything from there if you don't want to.

And just to reiterate what Willy said -- we provide binary packages for MSB so you can either build it from the scripts or install our packages.

bartgymnast · 06-18-2013, 03:05 AM

Their 1.8 roadmap has some flaws btw.

Release 1.8

Add support for Metacity as window manager
Add support for GTK3
Add support for Wayland

GTK3 is being developped for wayland support, so if the update to GTK+3.10 / 3.12
they have wayland support.
Metacity needs to be picked up to be completly rewritten against GTK+3 as it is deprecated and not GTK+3 compatible.

solarfields · 06-18-2013, 05:02 AM

chess and willy,

are there any plans to submit MATESlackBuild to SlackBuilds.org? Some dependencies (like gtk-engines) are already available from them.

chess · 06-18-2013, 08:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by solarfields

chess and willy,

are there any plans to submit MATESlackBuild to SlackBuilds.org? Some dependencies (like gtk-engines) are already available from them.

No. We want to keep it separate like GnomeSlackBuild was. Why? Flexibility - so we can diverge from the version in SBo if necessary, so we can have SlackBuild scripts that will automatically download the sources (not called for in the SBo template), so we can, if necessary, replace stock Slackware packages, which SBo won't do, and other such reasons. As to that last point, we state at the very top of the MSB project page that one of our goals is to not replace any stock Slackware packages and so far that has not been necessary. And trust me, I want to keep it that way. But, given the somewhat fluid nature of DE development, we have to keep the possibility open.

So, all in all, it's best to keep it a separate project.

solarfields · 06-18-2013, 08:56 AM

chess,

thanks for the clarification!