The latest version of the MATE desktop environment, 1.12.1, has just landed in Debian Unstable, and it looks like it’s also coming to Ubuntu MATE 16.04 Alpha 1 as well.
Some of the MATE developers are also the maintainers of the desktop package for various other distributions such as Debian or Arch Linux. In this way, many of the major distributions get the latest version of the desktop environment really quick, and it’s not up to a member of the community to push the upgrades.
The latest version of the MATE desktop is not a huge upgrade, but it looks like it fixes a few issues. When it comes to a big piece of software, any upgrade is good, and the same can be said about MATE 1.12.1. This particular version has been out for a few days already, and it would have been integrated sooner, but it took a while because it overlapped with the holidays.
MATE 1.12.1 coming to Debian and Ubuntu
Soon after Martin Wimpress announced that the latest MATE version would land to in Debian Unstable, he also confirmed that it’s going to arrive in Ubuntu MATE 16.04 LTS Alpha 1, which should be available today.
According to the MATE 1.12.1 changelog, some obsolete mate-user-guide files have been removed, the /usr/share/icons folder has been added, the mate-user-guide has been removed, all references to mate-gsettings-toggle are gone (this tool has been removed from mate-desktop 1.12.x), and one additional symbol is now provided since marco 1.12.x.
The MATE 1.12 major release from November covered a lot of changes and improvements. You can read more about it in our initial coverage. If you’re using one of the major Linux distributions out there, it’s very likely that MATE 1.12.1 is already available, or it’s going to land very soon.
Ubuntu MATE 16.04 LTS Alpha 1 is expected to arrive sometime today along with many of the other flavors, with the exception of Ubuntu itself.
Update: Martin Wimpress has informed us that MATE 1.12.1 will arrive via updates in Ubuntu MATE 16.04 LTS Alpha in a few days; it won’t be included by default.
Via Softpedia