Martin Wimpress, co-founder and leader of the Ubuntu MATE distribution, who served as the Director of Desktop Development at Canonical from 2019 to 2021, announced that his involvement in the project is coming to an end and he is looking for developers willing to continue working on the Ubuntu MATE distribution and maintain the packages related to the MATE desktop environment in the Ubuntu repository.
It has been noted that Martin no longer feels the same enthusiasm; his interests have changed, and he no longer has the time to devote to the Ubuntu MATE project. Consequently, he would like to hand over the management of the project to developers who have the time and energy to work on Ubuntu MATE.
Ubuntu MATE still remains on the MATE 1.26 branch formed in 2021, has unresolved issues, and suffers from a lack of developers. The release of Ubuntu MATE 26.04 has been decided not to carry LTS status, and the release publication is in question — despite the start of beta testing for Ubuntu 26.10, builds of the beta version of Ubuntu MATE 26.04 have not yet been created. Development of the MATE desktop environment has been stagnant since spring 2024.
Source: opennet.ru
