MATE Desktop Environment in Debian
Hi,
I am a developer of MATE Desktop Environment
(http://www.mate-desktop.org), a fork of GNOME2 started in June 2011.
Currently MATE has a little team of developers and contributors, and
many users thanks to ready packages for some distributions (Debian,
Ubuntu, Arch, Fedora) and thanks to the inclusion in the latest Linux
Mint edition.
A lot of work is done from the initial renaming script. We solved many
bugs and fixed all things with the latest libraries since GNOME2 has
gone, and we fixed conflicts with GNOME3. We added some new features,
too.
I think to give to users the chance to use the desktop that they used
for many years is a great thing for a distribution, if this is supported
and has a team who work on it.
Someone can object that MATE is based on a dead technology, but GTK3
support is on our roadmap and we already started to work on it.
Someone else can object "Why dont you help GNOME3 fallback session or
XFCE?". Well, our goal is to keep things like GNOME2. In GNOME3 there
are a lot of changes in all software, e.g. in Nautilus and in many
others. XFCE is very different from GNOME2. We want to be focused on
this purpose to support a desktop like GNOME2.
The nice peculiarity of the free software is anyone can develop
applications at will. Our work doesnt damage other software.
Completed the brief introduction about MATE, I'm going to write about
the goal of this mail.
I am a Debian user for many years and I know well all his components,
like dpkg, the debian policy and the process to have new packages. I
started to contribute on MATE as packager for Debian. We have already a
repository for Wheezy (http://wiki.mate-desktop.org/download#debian).
Many users are using it well. Now that this is enough stable, I begun
the process for ask the inclusion in Debian.
The first package is mate-common.
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=658783 (ITP)
http://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/2012/02/msg00115.html (RFS)
With this mail I wish to have opinions and suggestions about our work
from Debian Developers.
Thank you!
Stefano Karapetsas
Reply to: