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Ubuntu MATE Changelog

What's new in Ubuntu MATE 22.10

Nov 3, 2022
  • MATE Desktop:
  • The usual point release updates to MATE Desktop and Ayatana Indicators have been included that fix an assortment on minor bugs. The main change in MATE Desktop is to MATE Panel, where we’ve included an early snapshot release of mate-panel 1.27.0 along with a patch set that adds center alignment of panel applets.
  • This much requested feature comes from Ubuntu MATE community contributor Gordon N. Squash 🇺🇸 and allows panel applets to be center aligned, as well as the usual left and right alignment. I’m sure you’ll all join me in thanking Gordon for working on this feature.
  • Center aligning of applet icons will ship with MATE Desktop 1.28, but we’re including it early 🐓 for Ubuntu MATE users. We’ve updated MATE Tweak to correctly save/restore custom layouts that use center aligned applets and all the panel layouts shipped with Ubuntu MATE 22.10 have been updated so they’re compatible with center alignment of applets
  • AI Generated wallpapers (again!):
  • My friend Simon Butcher is Head of Research Platforms at Queen Mary University of London managing the Apocrita HPC cluster service. Once again, Simon has created some stunning AI generated wallpapers for Ubuntu MATE using bleeding edge diffusion models.
  • AI image generation is continuing to improve at a mind-boggling rate. Yet, until recently, coherent human faces, hands and anatomically correct animals have proved rather tricky. Fortunately human faces are getting particular attention in the open source community after the release of Stable Diffusion. However, while an anthropomorphic portrait of a Kudu wearing a rather dapper suit will be stylishly rendered, getting consistent results for kudu in their natural habitat proved particularly tricky, exacerbated by their elegant horn structure. Often you will get rather wild interpretations of the horns, 5 legged creatures, or nightmarish output akin to the Pushmi-Pullyu from the Dr Doolittle stories.
  • Jellyfish, on the other hand, are a mass of tentacles and perhaps benefit aesthetically from the randomness induced by AI-generated images, in the same way that forests, mountains and hobbit villages generated by AI can be produced en-masse to a very satisfying extent. So while 1000 stunning unique images of jellyfish can be produced in a few minutes with a powerful GPU, the kudu was quite a challenge, and I had to experiment a lot with various prompts and styles, and a lot of cherry-picking - throwing away about 99% of the results that weren’t quite right. For the next release, I’m hoping we’ll see further AI innovation in time for the next release, or…maybe the next code name will be a lionfish?
  • PipeWire:
  • PulseAudio has been replaced with PipeWire and Bluetooth audio codec support has been expanded with the addition of AAC, LDAC, aptX and aptX HD.
  • As a podcaster and streamer I’m delighted to have PipeWire installed by default in Ubuntu MATE 22.10. The migration to PipeWire has resolved some longstanding minor annoyances I’ve had with audio in that past and all the tools 🧰 I use for audio and video production continue to function correctly.
  • PipeWire on Ubuntu MATE 22.04:
  • If you like to ride the LTS train 🚆 but want to use PipeWire in Ubuntu MATE 22.04 (as I have been doing for some months) then this is how to make the change:
  • sudo apt-get install gstreamer1.0-pipewire pipewire-audio-client-libraries wireplumber
  • sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio-module-bluetooth
  • sudo apt-get install libfdk-aac2 libldacbt-abr2 libldacbt-enc2 libopenaptx0 libspa-0.2-bluetooth libspa-0.2-jack
  • Ubuntu MATE Stuff:
  • The “MATE HUD” has seen some significant work from community contributor twa022.
  • The HUD now supports MATE, XFCE and Budgie, has improved accuracy for HUD placement (taking into account various panel offsets/struts), is highly configurable and includes a new HUD settings app:
  • HUD Settings:
  • MATE User Manager:
  • A new utility, User Manager, has been added to complement the suite of MATE tools. User Manager replaces the aging gnome-system-tools which was removed from Ubuntu MATE in the 22.04 release and allows you to add/modify/remove user accounts. It also includes the ability to define which users are Administrators, enable/disable auto-login, set profile images and manage group memberships.
  • MATE User Manager:
  • Yaru:
  • And last but not least, the Ubuntu MATE Artwork package has been updated to include all the refinements and improvements in the suite of Yaru themes
  • Major Applications:
  • Accompanying MATE Desktop 1.26.1 and Linux 5.19 are Firefox 105, Celluloid 0.20, Evolution 3.46, LibreOffice 7.4.