Ubuntu MATE running MATE Desktop Environment 1.12
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Developer(s) | Perberos and MATE Developers |
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Initial release | August 19, 2011 |
Stable release |
1.16 / September 21, 2016
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Repository | git |
Development status | Active |
Written in | C, C++, Python |
Operating system | Unix-like with X11 (X Window System) |
Available in | Multilingual |
Type | Desktop environment |
License | GNU LGPLv2, GNU GPLv2 |
Website | mate-desktop |
MATE (/ˈmɑːteɪ/; Spanish pronunciation: [ˈmate]) is a desktop environment forked from the now-unmaintained code base of GNOME 2. It is named after the South American plant yerba mate and tea made from the herb, mate. The name was originally all capital letters to follow the nomenclature of other Free Software desktop environments like KDE and LXDE. The recursive backronym "MATE Advanced Traditional Environment" was subsequently adopted by most of the MATE community, again in the spirit of Free Software like GNU ("GNU's Not Unix!"). The use of a new name, instead of GNOME, avoids conflicts with GNOME 3 components.
GNOME 3 (released in April 2011) replaced the classic desktop metaphor, substituting its native user interface: GNOME Shell. This action led to some criticism from parts of the free software community. Some users refused to accept the new interface design of GNOME and called for continued development of GNOME 2. An Argentine user of Arch Linux started the MATE project in order to meet this demand and announced the availability of MATE on 18 June 2011.
MATE has forked a number of applications originating as the GNOME Core Applications, and developers have written several other applications from scratch. The forked applications have new names. Most of them used names from Spanish, including: