First, I would like to spread this nice guide written by Infirit on our wiki about GSettings and dconf in MATE 1.6:

• http://wiki.mate-desktop.org/docs:gsettings

A thing you could miss in dconf-editor is the edit of GSettings values with dynamic paths. Some MATE applications use dynamic paths:

• mate-panel, for applets and panels configuration
• mate-terminal, for profiles configuration
• mate-control-center, for custom keybindings settings

dconf-editor doesnt know the used schema in dynamic paths, so you need to use gsettings tool to change these values:


gsettings get SCHEMA[:PATH] KEY
gsettings set SCHEMA[:PATH] KEY VALUE


For example:


gsettings set org.mate.panel.applet.clock:/org/mate/panel/objects/clock/prefs/ show-seconds false


• New exciting features, like window snapping in window manager, a plugin system for the file manager (currently extensions cant be enabled/disabled without restart Caja), epub support in document viewer…
• Add option to use Metacity as default window manager (this is already possible, but we’ll support completely Metacity also in control center, workspaces names, etc.)
• Support GStreamer 1.0
• Support completely new features of systemd
• Support GTK3, keeping availability to build with GTK2
• Support Wayland

This is a list of new features planned for the upcoming MATE Desktop 1.6 release. The list doesnt contain all the removed deprecated packages replaced with new technologies in glib/gio.

I would like to thank all people involved in the development and debug in the past months, and of course everyone that uses MATE.

You can test the development (and unstable!) packages of MATE Desktop 1.5, they are already available for some distributions. Obviously, dont use them in a production machine

List of new features and changes in 1.6 is available on MATE wiki

Debian Wheezy

You can add deb http://dev.mate-desktop.org/debian wheezy main to your /etc/apt/sources.list.

Ubuntu Quantal

You can add deb http://dev.mate-desktop.org/ubuntu quantal main to your /etc/apt/sources.list.

Fedora 17+

1.5 packages, also if unstable, are already on official Fedora repositories.

openSUSE

1.5 packages are available through OBS: https://build.opensuse.org/project/repositories?project=X11:MATE

Archlinux

You can build 1.5 packages using PKGBUILDs from https://github.com/mate-desktop/archlinux-packages.

This is a short list of some “success stories” for MATE Desktop that I know.

• Some distributions include MATE Desktop officially (and some of them have a dedicated MATE edition too): Fedora, Linux Mint, Sabayon and Salix OS.
• The Physics Department of the Freie Universitaet Berlin in Germany deploys MATE on their Debian Wheezy desktops for both students and employees.
• Portuguese Insurance company Tranquilidade has planned to migrate to Ubuntu 12.04 and MATE Desktop on their offices.
• Canadian Legal Aid Manitoba has planned to migrate to MATE Desktop 1.6 on their offices, and their sysadmin is helping on its development too.
• First Colo, a German Datacenter, has planned to migrate to MATE Desktop, and donated us a dedicated server to support our development.

Federico Mena Quintero accepted the proposal of me and Nelson Marques to continue to maintain it for MATE.

The next gnome-main-menu version will come out together with MATE 1.6.

• Restore toggle button for button and text-based location bar
  
• Add the ability to open bookmarks in the places side pane via the enter and space keys
• Add diff button for text files in file conflict dialog
  
• Fix autocompletion for remote locations
• Makes the filename column expand to its maximum instead of shrinking to a hardcoded value

Download link is in this Salix OS forum topic.

From Salix OS website:

Here is the first beta release of our new Salix edition, using the MATE Desktop Environment. For anyone not familiar with MATE, it’s a GNOME2 fork, that continues development of the GNOME 2.x branch. MATE uses the traditional desktop metaphor that was abandoned for newer GNOME 3.x releases. There was a lot of work involved by the MATE developers with forking MATE and most issues that appeared due to forking have been ironed out. The desktop experience provided by the MATE Desktop should now be on par with that of GNOME 2.32.x, with the added advantage that MATE is actually actively developed.

All of the GNOME parts that have been forked have been renamed, so that they don’t conflict with GNOME 3.x applications, but otherwise the functionality and behavior is exactly the same as it was in GNOME 2.32.x. For example, the Nautilus file manager is now named Caja in MATE, the Evince document viewer is now Atril and the File-Roller archive manager is now Engrampa. These forked applications will probably play a much bigger part in future Salix versions, for other editions as well, especially if Slackware doesn’t decide to move to GTK+3, which is highly unlikely.

Installation from these ISO images is performed using the standard Salix installer. These are not LiveCDs. The installation is identical to that of any other Salix edition and provides the option to make a Core mode installation, a Basic mode installation or a Full mode installation. The Core mode installation is identical to that present in all other Salix editions, it will only install a command line system, no GUI applications or environments. The Basic mode installation will install a very basic system with the MATE Desktop Environment, the Firefox web browser and the collection of Salix system tools, including the Gslapt package manager and Sourcery Slackbuild manager and not much more than that. The MATE Desktop Environment is as minimal as possible in a Basic mode installation, it only includes the Caja file, the MATE preferences tools and a few panel applets. A full mode installation includes everything that is present in the ISO images. That includes a full MATE Desktop Environment with all panel applets, the Atril document viewer, the Engrampa archive manager, the MATE power manager, MATE system utilities and more. The collection of software included in a Full mode installation resembles that of other Salix editions, especially the Xfce edition, including the Libreoffice suite, the Claws-mail emailing application, the Pidgin instant messenger, the GIMP image editor etc. Of course all Salix system tools that make system administration easier are installed, as in all other editions.

LMDE Update Pack 4 is out with the upcoming MATE 1.2 release. MATE will be the default desktop in the ISO, too.

This is a great news for MATE Desktop, thanks to the Linux Mint devs.

Links:

• Update Pack 4 is out! [The Linux Mint Blog]
• LMDE Update Pack 4 and alternatives to Gnome 2 [The Linux Mint Blog]

We added official MATE repository for Ubuntu Precise Pangolin (12.04).

deb http://packages.mate-desktop.org/repo/ubuntu/ precise main

Installation guide in the wiki.