Installing Mate

What is MATE?

MATE is a desktop environment forked from GNOME 2. It is under active development and is a viable alternative to GNOME 2, which is no longer supported.

Installation

Trisquel 8.0 and later

As of Trisquel 8.0 Flidas, MATE is the default installed graphical desktop environment, so no further installation is needed. The instructions described below pertain to older versions and are now deprecated in Trisquel 8.0. However, other desktop environments are readily available in Trisquel's repositories and can be added easily.

Trisquel 7.0

Trisquel 7.0 is based on Ubuntu "Trusty" LTS. As such, we can use its packages.

To install MATE on Trisquel 7.0, open up the terminal and type the following to add the MATE PPA to your system:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-mate-dev/ppa

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-mate-dev/trusty-mate

$ sudo apt-get update

Now, it's time to install MATE.

$ sudo apt-get install mate-desktop-environment

Congratulations! MATE has now been installed on your copy of Trisquel. To use it, simply choose the MATE option in the dropdown menu at the login screen.

Trisquel 6.0

Trisquel 6.0 is based on Ubuntu "Precise" LTS. As such, we can use its packages.

To install MATE on Trisquel 6, open the terminal and type the following to add the MATE PPA to your system:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-mate-dev/ppa

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-mate-dev/precise-mate

$ sudo apt-get update

Now, it's time to install MATE.

$ sudo apt-get install mate-desktop-environment

Congratulations! MATE has now been installed on your copy of Trisquel. To use it, simply choose the MATE option in the dropdown menu at the login screen.

Trisquel 5.5

Trisquel 5.5 is based on Ubuntu "Oneiric". As such, we can use its packages.

To install MATE on Trisquel 5.5, open up the terminal and type the following to add the MATE PPA to your system:

$ sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://packages.mate-desktop.org/repo/ubuntu oneiric main"

$ sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://repo.mate-desktop.org/ubuntu oneiric main"

$ sudo apt-get update

Next you'll need to install the mate keyring and run an apt-get update.

$ sudo apt-get install mate-archive-keyring

$ sudo apt-get update

Now, it's time to install MATE.

$ sudo apt-get install mate-core mate-desktop-environment

Congratulations! MATE has now been installed on your copy of Trisquel. To use it, simply choose the MATE option in the dropdown menu at the login screen.