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Ubuntu MATE 20.04 LTS represents 2 years of continuous improvement of MATE Desktop and Ubuntu MATE itself.

Ubuntu MATE 19.10 Interim Release is the most widely used interim release to date! All this became possible only thanks to a special group of QA testers who joined the Ubuntu MATE team and coordinated their activities with the developers.

What’s New in Ubuntu MATE 20.04 LTS

What has changed since Ubuntu MATE 18.04 LTS?

Those of you who are following Linux desktop news know that the released version of MATE Desktop has recently released version 1.24. Ubuntu MATE 20.04 ships with MATE Desktop 1.24. Thus, all the improvements in MATE Desktop 1.24 are present in Ubuntu MATE 20.04 LTS.

Since the last LTS, new changes have appeared:

  • Added several color variations
  • Added experimental ZFS installation option.
  • Added GameMode by Feral Interactive.
  • Fixed several crashes in the Brisk Menu and added keyboard navigation.
  • Fixed panel layout switching, which now works stably and reliably using MATE Tweak and Ubuntu MATE Welcome.
  • Fixed rendering of window controls on HiDPI displays.
  • Incorrect icon sizes in the MATE Control Center were fixed and they displayed well on HiDPI screens.
  • Fixed non-responsive Caja extensions.
  • Fixed mate-power-manager.
  • Fixed non-responsive Pluma plugins.
  • Fixed a crash in the MATE Dock applet due to an attribute error in adjust_minimise_pos ().
  • Autostart errors in mate-session-manager fixed.
  • Fixed saving / restoring custom panel layouts using MATE Tweak.
  • Added Ubuntu MATE Welcome a fresh coat of paint.
  • Updated Ubuntu MATE Guide
  • Ubiquity Slideshow Updated
  • Firmware update

Window Manager Improvements

Marco is the window manager for MATE Desktop, and on Ubuntu MATE 20.04 there are a number of new features and fixes.

XPresent support has been fixed properly, which means that screen tearing is now a thing of the past and the invisible window corners are finally fixed! HiDPI rendering enhancements eliminate a number of rendering problems that were present in various themes and components. In particular, window controls now support HIDPI.

Thumbnail preview

taskbar-preview

Minimized applications in the window list now provide thumbnail previews.

Workspace Switcher allows you to switch between workspaces using the keyboard and mouse. Alt + Tab + Ctrl.

workspace-switcher

Compiz and Compton have been removed from the standard Ubuntu MATE installation. The fundamental reasons for their inclusion in the distribution no longer exist. Having only one window manager for targeting means that you can quickly provide new features and minimize development efforts.

Brisk menu

The Brisk Menu is run by Solus GitHub, but it’s been several years since they released the new release. Therefore, the developers of Mate took over the development, and released a new version. Thanks to the efforts of several Ubuntu MATE members, several bug fixes appeared, including fixing frequent crashes in the Brisk Menu, preventing the scroll bar from appearing in the menu category column, muffling sounds when menu scrolling items were triggered, and adding keyboard navigation.

MATE Panel

An old error was fixed in the MATE panel, which caused it to crash when rebooting or replacing the panel. This was most noticeable when switching panel layouts using MATE Tweak and could lead to the panel layout remaining incomplete or completely missing. This bug has now been fixed! MATE Tweak has been updated for precise integration with the fixed behavior of the MATE panel, so switching layouts is now 100% reliable.

Indicators

The error that led to the appearance of too large icons in the indicators is finally resolved.

However, it turned out that some of the errors were related to the icons themselves. They were redone to adjust their resolution or aspect ratio; as a result, the panel and indicators scale correctly.

Also, a date / time indicator has been added and integrated into MATE Desktop, and now it replaces the MATE clock applet, which adjusts the placement of the clock and session indicators.

Applets MATE Window

The applets of the MATE window received a number of bug fixes and new features from a community member. Window control icons are now dynamically loaded from the currently selected theme, without requiring manual user configuration. A number of errors (including significant memory leaks) have also been fixed.

Evolution replace Thunderbird

The Ubuntu MATE development team discussed the advantages and disadvantages of switching a standard email client from Ubuntu MATE to Evolution. Here is a summary of this replacement:

Thunderbird does not integrate with the desktop. For example, theme integration, font integration, HUD compatibility, action button notifications, locale, and spell checking. Evolution integrates well with MATE Desktop, given that both use GTK3. Evolution includes interaction with LibreOffice, for which Ubuntu MATE already supplies the necessary components. Evolution has excellent integration with Google Mail and Exchange, including calendar, contacts, tasks and notes. The Date / Time indicator also integrates with Evolution. It is fully functional, including all the functions of creating new events or opening upcoming events using the indicator. When you click on a single day in a month, the events of that day, etc. are displayed.

Indicator Date Time

For many people who use webmail exclusively, this change will not have any effect, but for those using desktop mail, these performance improvements are significant.

Ubuntu MATE Themes

Dozens of topic related errors have been fixed. Ubuntu MATE themes have been added to gtk-common-themes, so bound applications are now correctly themed for Ubuntu MATE users. This change is already available until Ubuntu MATE 16.04.

MATE Tweak and Ubuntu MATE Welcome

desktop-layout

MATE Tweak now saves user preferences when switching between custom layouts thanks to community input.

If you are familiar with MATE Tweak, you know that it can switch panel layouts to simulate multiple platforms and distributions. For these purposes, a graphical layout switch has been built into Ubuntu. MATE Welcome to better promote this feature and make it more accessible.

NVIDIA Drivers

mate-optimus

If you follow Ubuntu related news, you will know that Ubuntu will supply NVIDIA’s proprietary drivers for ISO images. Anyone who selects additional third-party hardware drivers during installation without an Internet connection will have drivers available in stand-alone scripts.

After installation, users of Ubuntu MATE with computers supporting hybrid graphics will see the hybrid graphics applet MATE Optimus with the NVIDIA logo.

MATE Optimus adds support for NVIDIA On-Demand and will now offer users to log out when switching the GPU profile. MATE, XFCE, Budgie, Cinnamon, GNOME, KDE, and LXQt are supported. Shells called offload-glx & offload-vulkan can be used to easily load games / applications into the PRIME renderer.

NVIDIA drivers will now receive updates through the official Ubuntu software repository. Therefore, there is no need to add PPAs to receive updates and, more importantly, NVIDIA drivers are signed (which is not supported for drivers distributed through PPAs), so you can leave Secure Boot enabled.

ZFS on Linux

Support for ZFS as the root file system was added as an experimental feature in 04/20. The ZFS file system and partition markup are automatically processed directly through the installer.

Ubuntu Mate 20.04 LTS Free Download

You can download the new version from the links below.

Download Ubuntu Mate 20.04 LTS (.iso)     Download Ubuntu Mate 20.04 LTS (.torrent)

You should definitely try this version.

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