MATE Wayland Desktop

About

What this project is, what it is not, and the projects it is built from.

The project

MATE Wayland Desktop is a Linux distribution built around the two-panel MATE desktop running on the Wayland display system. It is for people who liked GNOME 2 or MATE and need Wayland.

The package and source repository are named mate-wayland-desktop.

In development. There is no public release yet. Release status

Questions

Is this an official MATE project?

No. It is an independent project. It is not an official MATE or GNOME product and is not endorsed by them. It is also not an official Ubuntu flavour.

What is MATE?

MATE is a desktop environment. It is the continuation of GNOME 2 and keeps the traditional layout of panels and menus. MATE is made by the MATE project, not by this one.

What is Wayland?

Wayland is the display system that is replacing X11 on Linux. It is the part that puts windows on the screen and delivers keyboard and mouse input to them.

What is labwc?

labwc is a Wayland compositor: the program that draws windows in a Wayland session. It is based on wlroots and is also used by Xfce and LXQt. Here it does the job that the window manager does on X11.

Will my existing applications run?

XWayland is included, so applications that are not yet Wayland-native still run.

Does it use snap?

No. There is no snap and no GNOME Shell in the image.

Which computers does it run on?

64-bit x86 (amd64) machines, with either BIOS or UEFI firmware.

Can I download it?

Not yet. The project is in development and has not made its first release. See the download page.

Credits

This desktop stands on the work of others.

  • MATE Desktop: the panel, menus, Caja file manager, Control Center and the rest of the desktop.
  • labwc: the Wayland compositor.
  • Ubuntu: the base packages.
  • Yaru: the icon theme, also used for the icons on this site.
  • Calamares: the installer.

Improvements made to MATE components in this project are sent upstream to the MATE project.

Licences for this site

Icons shown on this site are from the Yaru icon theme by the Yaru contributors, used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. They have been resized. Text is set in Noto Sans, used under the SIL Open Font License.