They just announce the long-awaited release of the new version of "MATE 1.28", which comes after almost 3 years since the last announced release (which was version 1.27). In this new version the developers mention that MATE 1.28 brings a host of updates in the code base and that this version focuses on improving compatibility with Wayland, updating several applications and fixing numerous bugs.
It is mentioned that in MATE 1.28 significant progress has been made in updating the bas codee, including removing obsolete libraries and ensuring compatibility with the latest GTK versions.
«One of the most notable improvements is the improved support for Wayland, bringing us closer to a fully native MATE -Wayland experience. Several components have been updated to work seamlessly with Wayland, ensuring a more integrated and responsive desktop environment.”
What's new in MATE 1.28?
As mentioned at the beginning, one of the main points where they focused on the development of MATE 1.28 was in improved support for Wayland, as an experimental Wayland-based session has been added using the Wayfire composite server. Most of the panel applets, such as the volume control, battery charge indicator, and network applet, have been ported to work with Wayland, with the only exceptions being the AccessX and Geyes applets, which are still tied to Wayland. X11.
In addition, adaptations and improvements were made, among which the support for managing desktop icons, draw background images and change the wallpaper in Wayland-based sessions, a plugin to show properties of audio and video files and has been enabled to work with the "Control Center", multimedia applications, notification display system, power management system and terminal emulator.
It is also mentioned that in MATE 1.28, a list of active windows can now be displayed and provide an accurate indication of the Recycle Bin Status in Wayland and that the image viewer, the mate-control-center configurator, the Engrampa archive program, mate-terminal, mate-desktop, mate-menu, mate-polkit, mate-power-manager, and mate-system have been updated -monitor to work with Wayland and improve its performance.
On the other hand, in MATE 1.28, the “alt-tab-raise-windows” setting to highlight selected windows in the Alt+tab interface, making it easier to identify, the Quickhighlight plugin has been added, which highlights selected text fragments in the document in the Pluma text editor.
Of the other changes that stand out:
- The Atril document viewer now uses the libarchiv library to handle comics formats and has declared support for the EPUB format. The browser engine has been updated to WebKitGTK 4.2.1, removing deprecated methods.
- The Engrampa archive program now uses the unar utility to work with CPIO and has improved support for various archivers.
- The terminal emulator “MATE Terminal” ensures correct file transfer from the file manager and has added support for OSC 8 escape sequences and hyperlinks. Working with tabs has also been improved, allowing you to change their name with a double click.
- Support for the middle mouse button was added to the mate-indicator-applet.
- Mate-settings-daemon now uses GDBus instead of dbus-glib.
- The system monitor interface (mate-system-monitor) has been improved and support for systemd is included by default.
- Changes have been made to the eom (Eye of MATE) image viewer to improve stability and efficiency, as well as address memory leaks and make cosmetic adjustments.
- Improved the interface of the Mozo menu editor.
- The code base has been cleaned up of obsolete libraries and support for current versions of GTK has been implemented.
- Most panel applets will now work in Wayland if built in process.
- Creation of in-process applets is now supported.
Finally, it is important to mention that as such the release of MATE 1.28 was scheduled for February 27, but as such the announcement appeared on the MATE website, since as I mentioned even when we talked about the release of Ubuntu MATE, the new branch was already mentioned as tags in the project's Git repository.
Regarding the availability of MATE 1.28, you should know that it is already available in the repositories of the main distributions and just update if you are already using the desktop or install to enjoy this new version.
finally if you are interested in knowing more about it, you can check the details In the following link.