Linux Mint 18.3 “Sylvia” MATE released!

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clem
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Linux Mint 18.3 “Sylvia” MATE released!

Post by clem »

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nashjc
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Re: Linux Mint 18.3 “Sylvia” MATE released!

Post by nashjc »

I've upgraded 3 machines (64bit MATE 18.3) using the tool in Update Manager under Edit tab.

Only issue noticed is that on all 3 machines the update notification icon (bottom R on taskbar near date and time) shows
that there are updates when I've done all that are available.

Prof. J C Nash
tony1112

Re: Linux Mint 18.3 “Sylvia” MATE released!

Post by tony1112 »

Unfortunately, multi-monitor support has got worse in each release since GTK2 was abandoned, and I am not convinced that anyone is really testing this out. In this respect, Mint 18.3/MATE is the worst so far and initialises to a complete mess on my configuration.

With GTK2, multiple X Screens just worked great. On the other hand, GTK3 has crippled this feature of X in favour of multiple monitors on a single screen. This is often a problem as many applications do not properly support multi-monitor operations, especially when the primary monitor is not the left hand monitor (origin 0.0).

I have an (awkward) configuration with 3 monitors with the centre monitor as primary. In addition, the left hand monitor has a 1280 x 1024 resolution and other two are 1920 x 1080. I used to run the left hand monitor as a separate X Screen and use it for EMail while the other two were the workspace. With MATE/GTK3, the best you can do is to fix the left hand monitor EMail app on all workspaces - but the other applications still mess with. But this is not the real problem. The real problem is that MATE never seems to be able to initialise itself correctly with this configuration.

With Mint 18.2, the problem was with the right hand screen. Sometimes this was initialised correctly and at other times only the left hand 3rd was visible. To correct this, the xrandr configuration had to be re-applied. Sometimes more than once.

I upgrade to Mint 18.3 hoping for the problem to have gone away. Oh no, it got worse. When MATE initialises, the three screens are just a mess, with the left hand screen duplicated and superimposed on the centre screen, which is then offset partly appearing on the right hand screen. Simply re-applying the xrandr configuration does not make the problem go away this time. Instead, the only workaround I have found is to force a configuration with the "same image on all monitors" and then to re-create the required configuration. Then it works and the desktop is good.

The real tragedy is that none of this should have been necessary. While GTK3 refuses to acknowledge multiple X screens, this is easily worked around by calling down to xlib to find out the number of X Screens and then using a separate X connection (GTK Display) for each screen. Given MATE's original philosophy why wasn't this done? It is never worth drinking the GTK3 Kool Aid.
chris2kari

Re: Linux Mint 18.3 “Sylvia” MATE released!

Post by chris2kari »

Overall a great release. Mate version hits the sweet spot between XFCE & Cinnamon verisons beautifully.
Until now I had resisted using Mint but as all other main stream distro's slide into a morass of instability Mint is an island of sanity.

The lemming like rush over the SystemD/Wayland cliff will kill Linux in my opinion.
Mint will suffice for now but making preparations to switch to a BSD in the near future.

Congratulations to the Mint team on a job well done.
Will happily suport you financially untill we switch to BSD.

Cheers
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