14 DAY TRIAL // Manjaro leader Philip Müller announced this past weekend that the major MATE 1.14 desktop environment had finally landed in the main software repositories of the Arch Linux-based distribution.
Usually, the Manjaro Linux repos are filled with new software released from time to time, bundled as update packs, based on the latest updates from the Arch Linux repositories. However, this time around, the Manjaro Linux devs had to step up their game and take control of the maintenance of the MATE packages for the distribution.
Why? Because it looks like the MATE packages in Arch Linux are no longer maintained, and the last version offered there is 1.12.1, released in December 2015. Therefore, if you're using Manjaro Linux, you can now update the MATE desktop environment to the latest 1.14 version, a major release with dozens of new features.
"After a little struggle we decided to maintain MATE on our own, since Arch Linux has no active maintainer anymore for this desktop environment," said Philip Müller on behalf of the Manjaro development team. "Additionally, we created a Manjaro live-media you can use to test this new version of MATE without messing with your current installation."
Manjaro Linux 16.06 Dev MATE Community Edition now available for testing
To make things even cooler for the Manjaro community, Philip Müller and his team of skillful developers have immediately put together a new Live ISO image of the upcoming Manjaro Linux 16.06 "Daniella" MATE Community Edition so they can test the MATE 1.14 desktop environment if they don't yet have it installed.
But if you have MATE installed as the default desktop environment for your Manjaro Linux-powered computer, you can now update to the MATE 1.14 release by using your favorite package manager. The latest version of the MATE desktop environment is now 1.14.1, officially introduced on GitHub on May 21, 2016.