---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Larry Len Rainey <llrainey15@gmail.com>
To: openSUSE Factory - Mailing List <opensuse-factory@opensuse.org>, OpenSUSE Support <support@lists.opensuse.org>
Cc:
Bcc:
Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2023 09:22:17 -0600
Subject: 15.5 Beta Full disappointment

The Alpha version of 15.5 had MATE desktop as a choice. MATE is no longer offer nor is Cinnamon in 15.5. Some say MATE is stale - I say it is Mature, Stable, and relative bug free - what you want for a stable computer environment.

Yes, MATE still is in Tumbleweed, but many of those retired people I support do not have enough internet to support zypper dup that Tumbleweed requires way too often. They could not do windows 7, 8, 10 and 11. XP was the last Windows they were comfortable with. Some still use Windows XP and the mail app that they used with Windows 95.

I dropped Windows in the XP days - Centos was the 1st Full time Linux and I had VirtualBox working with an Windows XP guest on a 4 core computer with 4mb of ram. I had not completely wean myself off Windows as I had not found Linux apps to replace my Windows apps.

Many of us do not care for KDE or Gnome. The other choice LXDE does not provide all the options needed.

Looks like 15.4 is the last OpenSUSE version I will be supporting.

Mint Linux offers MATE as a standard desktop. That will probably be the winner as it has a long term version.

Over the next year I will be converting 145 OpenSUSE 15.4 running MATE to Mint Linux unless you can convince me that MATE is coming.

Larry Rainey - Unix since 1973, Linux since Mandrake was offered on CD in 1998.

@Larry R:

I also like MATE quite a bit, I have it as the DE for a few of my distros . . . and I have a Leap 15.5 Alpha>Beta install running. Don't have time to check, but usually any DE can be added into any system . . . via YaSt or possibly just "sudo zypper in mate" ?????

If that isn't something you want to mess with, my Leap 15.5 system is running XFCE, which I just picked for the variety. But going back to the early '00's in PPC linux I usually had Xubuntu XFCE and Lubuntu LXDE as the systems most reliable and using the least resources. XFCE is a good choice if MATE can't work in Leap 15.5.

Other option, Gecko stable . . . she offers just about every single DE you could imagine for her system . . . Gecko is like ubuntu, a stack on openSUSE . . . works out of the box, etc.

Lastly, for the MATE purist is now ubuntu-MATE . . . a bonded system of ubuntu with built-in MATE . . . well supported. I used to have that as an install because I like the simplicity of MATE so much, but ubuntu doesn't play well with others in grub, so, for a single system on a machine, it's fine. If you want a few other non-Debian systems then it messes with UUID numbers.