Difference between revisions of "MATE"
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$ gsettings set org.mate.media-handling automount-open false | $ gsettings set org.mate.media-handling automount-open false | ||
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+ | And to disable automounting: | ||
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+ | $ gsettings set org.mate.media-handling automount false | ||
=== Screensaver === | === Screensaver === |
Revision as of 16:53, 14 January 2018
From MATE homepage:
- The MATE Desktop Environment is the continuation of GNOME 2. It provides an intuitive and attractive desktop environment using traditional metaphors for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. MATE is under active development to add support for new technologies while preserving a traditional desktop experience.
Contents
- 1 MATE applications
- 2 Installation
- 3 Starting MATE
- 4 Configuration
- 5 Tips and tricks
- 5.1 Enabling compositing
- 5.2 Enabling new window centering
- 5.3 Enabling window snapping
- 5.4 Show or hide desktop icons
- 5.5 Use a different window manager with MATE
- 5.6 Prevent Caja from managing the desktop
- 5.7 Change window decoration button order
- 5.8 Auto open file manager after drive mount
- 5.9 Screensaver
- 5.10 Spatial view in Caja
- 5.11 Change font DPI setting
- 5.12 Change applications menu icon
- 5.13 Panel speed settings
- 5.14 Set the terminal for caja-open-terminal
- 6 Troubleshooting
- 7 See also
MATE applications
MATE is largely composed of GNOME 2 applications and utilities, forked and renamed to avoid conflicting with their GNOME 3 counterparts. Below is a list of common GNOME applications which have been renamed in MATE.
Application | GNOME 2 | MATE |
---|---|---|
menu editor | Alacarte | mozo |
file manager | Nautilus | caja |
window manager | Metacity | marco |
text editor | Gedit | pluma |
image viewer | Eye of GNOME | Eye of MATE (eom) |
document viewer | Evince | atril |
archive manager | File Roller | engrampa |
Other applications and core components prefixed with GNOME (such as GNOME Terminal, GNOME Panel, GNOME Menus, etc.) have had the prefix changed to MATE so they become MATE Panel, MATE Menus etc.
Installation
MATE is available in the official repositories and can be installed with one of the following:
- The mate group contains the core desktop environment required for the standard MATE experience.
- The mate-extra group contains additional utilities and applications that integrate well with the MATE desktop. Installing just the mate-extra group will not pull in the whole mate group via dependencies. If you want to install all MATE packages then you will need to explicitly install both groups.
The base desktop consists of marco, mate-panel and mate-session-manager,
Additional MATE packages
There are a number of other unofficial MATE applications that are contributed to and maintained by the MATE community and therefore not included in the mate or mate-extra groups.
- Dock Applet — Application dock for the MATE panel.
- Online Radio Applet — A MATE panel applet to let you play your favourite online radio station with a single click.
- MATE Menu — Advanced menu for MATE Panel, a fork of MintMenu.
- MATE Tweak — Tweak tool for MATE, a fork of mintDesktop.
- BriskMenu — Modern, efficient menu for the MATE Desktop Environment from SolusOS distribution.
Additional packages need to be installed to take advantage of some of Caja's advanced features - see File manager functionality.
MATE unstable
Consider the following community efforts, cf. forum:
Starting MATE
Choose MATE from the menu in a display manager of choice.
Alternatively, to start MATE with startx, append exec mate-session
to your ~/.xinitrc
file. See xinitrc for details, such as preserving the logind session.
Configuration
MATE can be configured with its Control Center application (mate-control-center) provided by the mate-control-center package. To manage some hardware, you may need to install additional tools.
- Audio
- ALSA and PulseAudio backends are supported by the mate-media package.
- Bluetooth
- For Bluetooth device support, install the blueman package. See Blueman.
- Networking
- For configuring the network, install the network-manager-applet package. See NetworkManager.
- Power
- UPower backend is supported by the mate-power-manager package.
- Printers
- For configuring the printers, install the system-config-printer package.
Accessibility
MATE is well suited for use by individuals with sight or mobility impairment. Install orca, espeak (Screen reader for individuals who are blind or visually impaired) and onboard (On-screen keyboard useful for mobility impaired users)
Before starting MATE for the first time, enter the following command as the user who needs accessibility features:
$ gsettings set org.mate.interface accessibility true
Once you start MATE, you can configure the accessibility applications via System > Preferences > Assistive Technologies, although if you need Orca, you will need to run it from the Alt-F2
run window in order to start getting speech.
Notifications
- Battery discharge
To disable the notification on battery discharge, run:
$ gsettings set org.mate.power-manager.notify-discharging false
- Brightness
See Backlight#Kernel command-line options.
Tips and tricks
Enabling compositing
Compositing is not enabled by default. To enable it navigate to run System -> Preferences -> Look and Feel -> Windows
and click the tick box alongside Enable software compositing window manager in the General
tab. Alternatively, you can run the following from the terminal:
$ gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general compositing-manager true
Enabling new window centering
By default, new windows are placed in the top-left corner. To center new windows on creation navigate to run System -> Preferences -> Windows
and click the tick box alongside Center new windows in the Placement
tab. Alternatively, you can run the following from the terminal:
$ gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general center-new-windows true
Enabling window snapping
Window snapping is not be enabled by default, to enable it navigate to run System -> Preferences -> Windows
and click the tick box alongside Enable side by side tiling in the Placement
tab. Alternatively, you can run the following from the terminal:
$ gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general side-by-side-tiling true
Show or hide desktop icons
By default, MATE shows multiple icons on the desktop: The content of your desktop directory, computer, home and network directories, the trash and mounted drives. You can show or hide them individually or all at once using gsettings
.
Hide all desktop icons
$ gsettings set org.mate.background show-desktop-icons false
Hide individual icons
Hide computer icon:
$ gsettings set org.mate.caja.desktop computer-icon-visible false
Hide user directory icon:
$ gsettings set org.mate.caja.desktop home-icon-visible false
Hide network icon:
$ gsettings set org.mate.caja.desktop network-icon-visible false
Hide trash icon:
$ gsettings set org.mate.caja.desktop trash-icon-visible false
Hide mounted volumes:
$ gsettings set org.mate.caja.desktop volumes-visible false
Replace false
with true
for the icons to reappear.
Use a different window manager with MATE
The marco window manager can be replaced with another window manager via either of the following methods:
- Using gsettings (recommended)
Execute the following to specify a different window manager for MATE:
$ gsettings set org.mate.session.required-components windowmanager wm-name
- Using MATE session autostart
You can autostart a window manager of your choice using mate-session-properties. This means that the autostarted window manager will replace the default window manager at login. Navigate to System -> Preferences -> Startup Applications. In the dialog click Add. The command should take the syntax wm-name --replace
.
Prevent Caja from managing the desktop
To prevent Caja from managing the desktop, execute the following:
$ gsettings set org.mate.background show-desktop-icons false $ killall caja # Caja will be restarted by session manager
Change window decoration button order
You can change the button order using the graphical dconf-editor or the gsettings command line tool:
$ gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general button-layout 'close,maximize,minimize:'
and put menu, close, minimize and maximize in your desired order, separated by commas. The colon is used to specify on which side of the titlebar the window buttons will appear and must be used for the changes to apply.
Auto open file manager after drive mount
By default, MATE automatically opens a new file manager window when a drive is mounted. To disable this:
$ gsettings set org.mate.media-handling automount-open false
And to disable automounting:
$ gsettings set org.mate.media-handling automount false
Screensaver
MATE uses mate-screensaver to lock your session. By default there are a limited number of screensavers available. To make more screensavers available, install the mate-screensaver-hacksAUR package. This will allow you to use XScreenSaver screensavers with mate-screensaver.
Spatial view in Caja
To ensure that each new folder opens in a new window (known as spatial view), open Caja's preferences dialog, click on the behaviour tab and tick the 'Open each folder in its own window' option. Alternatively, execute the following command which achieves the same effect:
$ gsettings set org.mate.caja.preferences always-use-browser false
Change font DPI setting
You can alter the DPI (dots per inch) of the fonts in MATE by right-clicking on the desktop and choosing Change desktop background > Fonts > Details > Resolution.
By default, the applications menu icon is set to start-here
. To use a different icon, copy your icon to a folder such as /usr/local/share/pixmaps
and execute the following:
$ gsettings set org.mate.panel.menubar icon-name icon
where icon is the name of your icon. Do not include the file extension in the icon name. Finally, restart MATE Panel.
Panel speed settings
- Hide/Unhide delay
To adjust the amount of time it takes for the panel to disappear or reappear when autohide is enabled, execute the following:
$ dconf write /org/mate/panel/toplevels/panel/(un)hide-delay time
where panel is either top or bottom and time is a value in miliseconds, e.g. 300.
- Animation speed
To set the speed at which panel animations occur, execute the following:
$ dconf write /org/mate/panel/toplevels/panel/animation-speed value
where panel is either top or bottom and value is either "'fast'"
, "'medium'"
or "'slow'"
.
Set the terminal for caja-open-terminal
The caja-open-terminal
extension uses GSettings to determine which terminal to use - mate-terminal is the default. To change the terminal that will be used, run the following command
$ gsettings set org.mate.applications-terminal exec my-terminal
where my-terminal is the name of the terminal executable to be launched, for example: xterm.
Troubleshooting
Toggling compositing
Some software may have issues rendering graphics when working on an environment using the nvidia proprietary drivers and a compositing window manager.
To easily toggle the compositing feature, save the following script somewhere within the Home directory, e.g. ~/.scripts/compositing.sh
:
#!/bin/bash if $(gsettings get org.mate.Marco.general compositing-manager) == "true" then gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general compositing-manager false else gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general compositing-manager true fi
and then create a custom keyboard shortcut that executes the file, e.g. Ctrl+Alt+C
, to sh ~/.scripts/compositing.sh
.
Vertical sync for compositing
marco does not support vertical synchronization via OpenGL, which may cause video tearing with enabled compositing. [1] Consider a different composite manager with OpenGL support such as Compton.
Consistent cursor theme
See Cursor themes#Desktop environments.
Use of gradient backgrounds with LightDM
If you wish to use the default MATE (1.8) Stripes background as the LightDM background as well so as to make for seamless transition from LightDM to MATE, you will find that it is runtime-constructed from a grayscale PNG upon which MATE layers a vertical blue-to-green gradient, something which LightDM does not currently support. If insistent, you can work around this by temporarily setting /org/mate/desktop/background/show-desktop-icons
to false
, either through the dconf-editor
tool available from the System Tools
menu or by running
$ gsettings set org.mate.background show-desktop-icons false
from the Alt-F2 Run Application
dialog, then running killall mate-panel
from said dialog and hitting Print Screen
before the panel reappears. You are then presented with a Save As
dialog for exactly that fully rendered, screen-sized PNG that you need for LightDM. Run
$ gsettings set org.mate.background show-desktop-icons true
to have your desktop icons reappear, if desired.
Enabling panel shadow
Due to a race condition, the panel shadow does not appear after logging in to the MATE desktop, even with compositing enabled. [2]
Copy /usr/share/applications/marco.desktop
and add a delay:
~/.local/share/applications/marco.desktop
X-MATE-Autostart-Phase=Applications X-MATE-Autostart-Delay=2 X-MATE-Provides=windowmanager X-MATE-Autostart-Notify=true
X-MATE-Autostart-Phase
must be set to Applications
.If this has no effect, increase the delay duration.
Disabling scroll in taskbar
A feature of the MATE panel window list is that windows can be scrolled through using the mouse or touchpad. This feature may be troublesome for some as there is potential for accidental, unintended scrolling through windows.
Whilst there is no way of disabling this feature through MATE's settings, this feature can be disabled by patching libwnck using the Arch Build System; in this case, rebuild libwnck with the following patch. For more information on rebuilding packages with patches applied, see Patching in ABS#Applying patches.
Logout/shutdown delayed by at-spi-registryd
When logging out or shutting down, you may find that you are presented with an A program is still running: at-spi-registryd.desktop popup. As a workaround, you can prevent at-spi-registryd from starting - see GTK+#Suppress warning about accessibility bus - though this may have an effect on some accessibility features.
See also
- MATE homepage
- MATE wiki for Arch Linux
- MATE desktop screenshots
- The MATE Desktop Environment - Arch Linux forum discussion about MATE