Two years after the last stable release, MATE desktop environment version 1.29 has been released. The MATE project continues to develop the codebase of GNOME 2.32 while maintaining the classic desktop layout concept. Version 1.29 is presented as experimental and is used for developing and testing features for the future stable release MATE 1.30.
Since spring 2024, development of MATE had been stagnant, but now Victor Kareh from Red Hat has joined in actively supporting the project. Changes in MATE 1.29 include:
- The MateRROutput configuration has been updated to include the property hotplug_mode_update, which utilizes the RandR extension to support dynamic resolution changes by output devices. In practice, this change allows the environment to adapt to changes in window size when launching in virtualization systems.
- The background thumbnail generation mechanism no longer relies on X11-specific calls when operating in Wayland-based environments. Instead of using gdk_x11_screen_get_xscreen to obtain screen size information on Wayland systems, the gdk_monitor_get_geometry call has been utilized.
- In the Marco window manager, settings for alt-tab-minimized-placement and alt-tab-urgent-placement have been implemented to choose how minimized windows and alerts are displayed in the Alt+Tab interface.
- In the Caja file manager, an option has been implemented to stop generating thumbnails in very large directories, and detaching tabs into separate windows is now allowed.
- Memory leaks and issues with color selection through mate-color-select have been resolved.
Source: opennet.ru
