14 DAY TRIAL // Martin Wimpress announced today the release of the Ubuntu MATE 19.10 operating system as part of the Ubuntu 19.10 (Eoan Ermine) series.
Dubbed by Martin Wimpress as a "paper-cut release," Ubuntu MATE 19.10 is here to address numerous issues from previous releases around the window manager, panel, and indicators. These include proper XPresent support in the Window Manager to fix screen tearing and further improve frame times in games, add invisible window corners, HiDPI rendering improvements, and cleaned up window controls, and improved Alt+Tab navigation.
Due to these changes in the Window Manager, Ubuntu MATE 19.10 doesn't ship with Compiz and Compton by default. Furthermore, the Brisk Menu and MATE Dock Applet are now developed in-house and received several improvements, the MATE Panel was updated with reliable layout switching, oversized icons in the indicators were fixed too, and a Date/Time indicator has been included by default.
"I have not been completely happy with the quality of recent Ubuntu MATE releases. All the important stuff works but there have been niggly issues that by themselves are not deal breakers, but in aggregate are frustrating and spoil the experience," said Martin Wimpress in the release announcement." I’ve been focused on resolving these issues during the 19.10 development cycle."
Updated and new apps
Ubuntu MATE 19.10 comes with new apps, such as the Mozilla Thunderbird email and news client, which replaces GNOME's Evolution, as well as GNOME MPV as default video player, which replaces VLC Media Player. Magnus, a new screen magnifier utility, has been added as well in this release, along with a new Indicator that provides a "notification center."
Also worth mentioning is the fact that MATE Window Applets have received various bug fixes and new features, the default Ubuntu MATE themes were updated to correctly show Span apps, MATE Tweak now preserves user preferences when switching between custom layouts, and Ubuntu MATE Welcome now integrates a graphical layout switcher.
Like the rest of the flavors, Ubuntu MATE 19.10 ships with the proprietary Nvidia graphics drivers in the ISO image, which has been greatly optimised to keep its size at around 2GB. Ubuntu MATE 19.10 is powered by Linux kernel 5.3 and features the latest MATE 1.22.2 desktop environment and you can download it right now for 64-bit PCs from our free software portal, and for GPD MicroPC from the official website.