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MATE

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Revision as of 23:29, 24 August 2021 by Jakko (talk | contribs)
MATE running on Samsung Galaxy S Advance (i9070)
MATE running on Samsung Galaxy S Advance (i9070)
In postmarketOS
Package postmarketos-ui-mate
Status Available

MATE is a desktop environment forked from the maintained code base of GNOME 2. It is installable on postmarketOS.

Status

It works on most devices with a working display, works fine without hardware acceleration. Also it has Hi-Dpi support. So apps will look better and usable. Use packages from Alpine repo.

After the postmarketOS loading splashscreen you will get a black screen for 20-30 seconds before the desktop appears. This seems due to an issue with marco (MATE window manager):

mate-session[1377]: WARNING: Application 'marco.desktop' failed to register before timeout

Install MATE Desktop

Run pmbootstrap init and choose mate in the interface section. The Alpine repository already contains all the packages for x86_64, armhf and aarch64 architectures. Nothing has to be done to enable it.

On Extra packages:

  • Add an on-screen keyboard like onboard, matchbox-keyboard or corekeyboard, see Input_methods#Conventional_on-screen_keyboards.
  • The network-manager-applet is recommendable. It will automatically show up in the notification area of the panel.

After installation:

  • The shell will automatically launch upon boot. If it doesn't, have a look at /etc/profile.d/start_mate.sh script.
  • Add the on-screen keyboard to Preferences -> Personal -> Startup Applicactions. Command e.g. /usr/bin/onboard. Thereafter, logout or reboot.

For the official MATE instructions, see their website.

Display

Follow the Display guide to optionally change it to landscape mode or fix display related issues.

Miscellaneous

  • For terminal usage: Change text color within the terminal by Edit -> Profile Preferences -> tab "Colors" -> uncheck "Use colors from system theme" -> choose e.g. built-in scheme "Custom", text color a light grey and backgrund color black (which optionally can be set transparent in the "Background" tab).
  • Disable mouse cursor by sudo vi /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf, change #xserver-command=X to xserver-command=X -nocursor, logout or reboot.
  • Secondary mouse click see Input_methods#Simulate_secondary_click.
  • In case you didn't add network-manager-applet to extra packages on init, see WiFi#Using_NetworkManager how to set up wifi by command line.
  • If you want to use LightDM as a login screen, see Display_manager#LightDM.
  • Screen locking is a bit of a challenge.
    • The easy part is enabeling it:
      • A timed locking in System -> Preferences -> Look and Feek -> Screensaver -> check "Lock screen when screensaver is active".
      • By e.g. pressing the power button in System -> Preferences -> Hardware -> Keyboard Shortcuts -> double-click the shortcut next to "Lock screen" -> press the power button to assign.
    • The tricky part is getting a virtual keyboard for unlocking, see Screen_locker#mate-screensaver.
    • For disabling the inputs, you can try something like Screen_locker:Disable_inputs#Xfce4 but the script sure needs to be adapted to the situation, whicht might not be easy.

Additional software

  • As a browser, install e.g. firefox or firefox-esr. To enable touch screen behaviour, add a new file sudo vi /etc/profile.d/firefox-touch-scrolling.sh and write export MOZ_USE_XINPUT2=1, in about:config change dom.w3c.touch_events.enabled from 2 (default, auto-detect) to 1 (enabled). For better touch screen usability, install package mobile-config-firefox (more information).
  • For phone applications, try calls, chatty and gnome-contacts, which are used in Phosh. Package modemmanager needs to be installed, start the service by sudo rc-service modemmanager start, add it permanently by sudo rc-update add modemmanager default and reboot.
  • To view PDF files, install package atril, for alternatives see PDF#PDF_viewers.