MATE 1.12 Released, Packages Coming Soon

After five months of development, MATE developers decided to release MATE 1.12 to public last night when i was asleep. They decided to put the release schedule shorter than previous releases (1.8 ->1.10) because they want to sync with the release schedule for Ubuntu and Fedora which are close to one to another.  I have posted this on this blog last month.

Although it's shorter cycle, that doesn't mean that it's not a worthed update. In contrary, this release is more like polishing what MATE Desktop has done so far by improving some parts that were lacked before while keeping the traditional metaphor for best desktop experience.

This are the highlight entries taken from ROADMAP:

• atril: use distro-packaged MathJax library (#158)
• marco: pointer window placement (#123)
• mate-utils: add timestamp to screenshot filename (#115)
• Switch to org.gnome.SessionManager name on DBus
• Move user guide to separate project
• Add option to toggle GTK+3 overlay scrolling
• Improve touchpad support

I have pushed all changes in MSB master branch and i already have 14.1-mate-1.12 branch ready as well, but i haven't really tested 1.12 in 14.1 environment. I'm planning to build MATE 1.12 for Slackware 14.1 today and hopefully i will have all the packages ready for public by this weekend. Upgrading to 1.12 should be easy as there are no new packages or removed packages, so simply use upgradepkg.

You will notice that for some packages, i keep using the old MATE 1.10 or even 1.8. That's intentional and the reasons are:

1. Slackware shipped older version of GTK+3 (mate-themes)
2. No new version (gnome-main-menu)
3. No longer developed, but still nice to have (mate-system-tools)

Please keep in mind that MASTER branch are no longer compatible with 14.1-mate-1.12 due to schedule changes last month. I was planning to release 1.12 for next Slackware 14.2, but at the end i decided to build another release for 14.1 and probably this will be the last release for 14.1. Future releases of MATE will be based on Slackware 14.2. If you want to build from source in -stable release, please use 14.1-mate-1.12 branch. Current users can still keep using master branch without any problem.