Ubuntu 20.04 beta released

[crosscourt]

I have to say though that Im really happy with the KDE distros Im using right now including Kubuntu 20.04 and you have to do some customizing to get Mate to look and do some of the things I prefer and get with KDE. I havent decided whether Im going to bother to install Ubuntu Mate onto my everyday system. Im a lot more settled down in my distro picks these days and havent been testing as much.

[tlmiller]

So the "Traditional" menu tweak looks like it might be tolerable. All the rest seem to be unusable. Still, another DE that has actually has a usable menu.

[tlmiller]

Installing now (VM on my primary desktop), I like the fact that Ubuntu now DEFAULTS to using swap files, not a swap partition. That's a nice change. So tired of Debian always complaining about my never creating swap partitions.

[tlmiller]

A proper menu!!!!

[crosscourt]

Youre using the Redmond layout which is my favorite as well. Curious to see what you think about it. Im probably going to install it on one of my SFFs tonite.

[tlmiller]

I actually had chosen traditional as my layout, but then went through and customized everything so heavily that it looks more like redmond, yeah. I don't know any of the layouts that default to this menu though, I had to find it through just adding EVERY menu onto the panel and finding which ones were actually functional.

My opinions of the Mate menus:
Advanced MATE Menu - HIDEOUS!!! OH GOD, GET IT AWAY!!!!
Brisk Menu - Oh look, it's a "me too" menu looking like everyone else and acting like everyone else. Less functional than a simple menu, but not as much information as an Advanced menu. So...basically worthless trash.
Classic Menu - Nice...kinda stretches out, but nice
Compact Menu - AND WE HAVE A WINNER!!!!

[tlmiller]

Still don't have it totally to my liking, but it's getting there.



It is, however, already like a billion times better than I've EVER managed to get XFCE to look.

[crosscourt]

I go Redmond then tweak the menu(right click menu button then preferences) but my menu isnt quite as basic as yours. Netbook layout comes with the Brisk menu by default but yes none really have the compact menu by default. I really didnt get much time to look at it last night so was commenting from some older experience with UBM which really doesnt apply anymore. Just finished my install and it runs like lightning. This is a very fast distro with its response and added some apps, and of course tweaked the menu and w3indows a bit and good to go. Saw my Canon printer automatically which impressed me and havent had any hardware issues at all.
This is well beyond my expectations and will quickly become a favorite for me. Always been a fan of UBM and with this version, its only gotten better.
Added a nice wallpaper and did some tweaks to startup apps and here I am. Dark theme which looks great and the custom browser pages for Firefox and Chromium look great. Ditched Evolution and added thunderbird,brasero,xfburn,bleachbit,psensor,htop,hardinfo and synaptic.

[crosscourt]

I had to pause and reflect on the fact that youre using another Ubuntu distro,

[tlmiller]

To be fair, if I actually use it on bare metal, I'll probably install everything via Debian or Arch, not Ubuntu. But this works for discovering that they actually do have a usable menu in MATE, and learning what programs to use for things.
Was surprised, the sound passthrough works PERFECTLY on Qemu/KVM. I was able to listen to the mp3's from this VM exactly like I was playing them natively on my desktop. Simple thing to be impressed by, but still, that impresses me how well it worked.
I also chose to do a minimal install so there was only like 2 things I had to uninstall, gdebi (WHY do they still bundle that on Ubuntu, it's obsolete now that apt has the ability to install locally w/ dependency resolution natively) and something else that I can't remember now...