Hi fellow Slackers,

After a few weeks of intensive building and testing, Microlinux proudly announces the birth of a pair of twin brothers: the Xfce and MATE editions of MLED 14.1.

http://www.microlinux.fr/mled_xfce.php

http://www.microlinux.fr/mled_mate.php

The MATE edition doesn't reinvent the wheel, but rather builds upon Willy's and Chess' work, providing many extras as well as some subtle visual improvements.

Take a look at the ChangeLogs for all the gory details:

http://www.microlinux.fr/changelogs.php

Feel free to use this thread for bug reports and suggestions.

Have fun,

Niki

Very nice work @kikinovak! Your tweaked MATE looks fantastic.

Thanks, Chess. On a side note: when you and Willy decide to go for the next major version of MATE, please don't delete the old versions from the repos, since MLED MATE depends on these repos.

We don't plan to. We've left the 14.0 packages up there and the 14.0-mate-1.6 git branch and we'll do the same with future Slackware and/or MATE releases. They just won't get updated since we can only support the current Slackware release and the current MATE release at any given time.

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On another side note: switching desktops gets rather easy with the split repos. Just for the fun of it (and because I really like Xfce), I switched my workstation from MLED 14.1 KDE to MLED 14.1 Xfce. Basically, it's a matter of reconfiguring the repos, using slackpkg clean-system and re-running the installation script. After two months of KDE, using Xfce for work feels like riding a Ducati after a Honda Gold Wing.

Thank you kikinovak for this great endeavor.

Um, does that mean a lot of insects on your teeth?

looks very nice!

after having KDE, XFCE and MATE, have you considered an Enlightenment17 edition?

This is awesome, thanks! It's nice to know about changing desktops. It'll be nice to try out mate at some point.

No, not really, since I already lack time.

On the other hand, if you're using Enlightenment, you can use the MLED 14.1 Base repository, as it is completely desktop-agnostic. On my various build machines, I'm actually using WindowMaker as main window manager.

If you install all the packages from [Base], this will give you a full set of codecs, plugins and fonts, as well as applications like Openshot, Inkscape and others. From there, you can build the remaining stuff using sbopkg, for example.

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Slightly off-topic? No, not really:
Niki's Slack World interview.

Hi kikinovak,

MLED MATE looks great. I do appreciate your thoughtful, business-oriented approach. Still, I am wondering about your rationale for offering three different desktops with MLED.

Obviously focusing on one desktop would give you three times more time for polishing the rough edges and would make your life supporting users simpler.

Would you care sharing your reasoning on this?

Phil

Hi Kikinovak,

I am testing the MATE edition, looks nice, thanks for the work. I have found a bug: the Home folder and the Desktop menus in Places do not point to proper place but to Audacious.

Hi philanc,

Your remark is spot-on. The first version of MLED (based on Slackware 13.37) was built exclusively around the Xfce desktop environment. The feedback from users was enthusiastic, but more often than not, they kept asking about $DIFFERENT_ENVIRONMENT. So I just gave this a try, to see if I could manage Xfce, KDE and MATE, with a shared Base repository.

Only recently have I realized that this is WAY more work than expected.

After much experimenting, I admit I have a strong bias for Xfce. It's by far the most robust, stable and "industrial grade" desktop. By this, I mean I can install it on client's desktop PCs and pretty much forget about it. And it's also quite friendly for computer-illiterate users.

So if I had to do it again, I'd say I would keep the Xfce edition only and build the "perfect Slackware desktop" around this DE. I know some applications are missing in Xfce, but these can be easily provided and integrated.

On a side note: my last client (a geophysical research company in south-west France) still has a couple of Solaris workstations with CDE running, for some highly specialized lab applications. When I installed a couple of Slackware servers and a Slackware client in this company, I felt I was merely pursuing the UNIX tradition.

So. What's your take about an Xfce-only and carefully tendered MLED? Would you use it without missing MATE and KDE? Let me know.

This is a known bug in MATE. Even though the Caja browser is preconfigured in /etc/skel/.config, MATE keeps on wanting to use Audacious (of all apps) to handle files and directories.

Solution: go to the Preferred Applications section in the MATE configuration panel and replace Audacious by Caja.

This makes me think I should publish a "Known Issues" page on the site.