Mate 1.4 on Lubuntu 12.04

I strongly prefer Ubuntu to Mint since Mint doesn't provide an install-time option for an encrypted LVM, i.e., full-disk encryption. This just seems to be a basic requirement, especially for a laptop. However, Ubuntu has gone along with the Gnome 3 atrocity, and compounded the matter with Ubuntu Shell. So, how to get a usable UI with Ubuntu? I've been playing around with LXDE on Lubuntu, and it has considerable appeal. However, when all is said and done, it is too bare-bones. What I really want is Mate, except not bloated.

What I have done this afternoon is a fresh Lubuntu 12.04 install, and then I installed Mate 1.4 on that. This is a newer version of Mate than I have on my Mint 13 systems; that is possibly a good thing--I'm hoping for fewer bugs.

How did I install Mate on Lubuntu? It's pretty simple--the first page Google pointed me to was the right one, at Ubuntu Geek. It was not quite right, but the solution was in the comments following the article. My summary, combining the above-mentioned article with one of the corrections in comments:

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

sudo apt-get install mate-archive-keyring

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install mate-archive-keyring

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install mate-core

sudo apt-get install mate-desktop-environment

The weird thing above is the repeated install of mate-archive-keyring and update. What I was seeing was that, as expected, apt was unable to verify the packages in the Mate archive without its public key. So the first time I installed mate-archive-keyring, there was a warning message indicating a missing key. Then I did the update, and received a similar warning message. The next time I installed mate-archive-keyring and update, each worked. Everything else was smooth and easy.

So, how badly bloated is the result? I'm not yet sure, but I will be going over it in the near future making a list of what to remove.

Really the Biggest Albatross Crippling Ubuntu and Mint

I'm an old Unix guy. Unix worked. When I saw the opportunity to blow away Windows junk with Linux, I jumped at it thinking it would be a simpler, more reliable OS. In the '90s that was a correct assessment. Now, Linux distros are continuously chasing new features and thus becoming bloated with partly-working software. I'd prefer to find an OS where attention is paid to quality.

In the late '80s I taught intro CS on Macs, and they were utter crap. Cooperative multitasking? One-button mice? Give me a break. A former colleague used to say that a computer user's intelligence is directly proportional to the number of buttons on his mouse. I realize, as did he (I think), that the generalization doesn't hold, but copying and pasting in Windows is really clumsy due to the 2-button mouse limitation, and it's hard to imagine a Mac being any better. Of course, Macs still use one-button mice, and my early-learned disdain for Macs survives, though without any actual Mac usage in the past couple decades.

I've been married more recently than I've spent more than 10 minutes using a Mac.

Is Solaris any better? The word on the street suggests not, especially since Sun got bought out. How about BSD? I want the system to be invisible and let me do my work. I guess I want SunOS 4, but not really...

Audio Working (Today); Maybe Popping Mint & Ubuntu from Active Stack and Pushing them to Used Stack

Audio is working today on my Linux Mint 13 64b system, which is a pleasant surprise. It's been stuttering the last few weeks, and after much Googling it appears to be a known problem with PulseAudio, one of Linux's several albatrosses. As soon as I read speculation that it would be fixed in Mint 14, I spent a little while pondering OSS, but I have work to do, and clearly the Ubuntu/Mint flavors of Linux are not cut out for that. Is it time to go back to Debian? My recollection was that, as of a few years ago, Debian mostly worked. Or do I try out Arch Linux?

The biggest albatrosses around Ubuntu/Mint's indistinguishable necks? Unity and Gnome Shell, and the notion that we're more interested in crippling desktop and laptop computers to look like smart phones than in, again, actually getting our work done.

An Even Nicer Little Improvement in Linux Mint 13

Mint 13, as is common in the Ubuntu world, includes a framework for spyware called zeitgeist. In the past it was challenging to remove since apt would then try to remove the entire gnome environment. So my reaction was to disable it to the extent possible, but it's still dangerous to have this stuff on the system. However, on a Mint 13/Mate system dumping zeitgeist is easy:

  sudo apt-get remove zeitgeist zeitgeist-core zeitgeist-datahub

Yippee!

This is a followup to Nice Little Improvement in Linux Mint 13.