A New Home for MATE Desktop Users and Some Long Overdue Forum Updates

A few days ago I received an email from Eric Marceau, a longtime member of the ubuntu-mate.community forum, reaching out to ask whether LinuxCommunity.io would be willing to accommodate a group for MATE Desktop users.

The ubuntu-mate.community forum announced it was shutting down and migrating MATE under the Ubuntu banner. The new Ubuntu Discourse site would be strictly Ubuntu-focused, leaving everyone else without a home.

Forum groups page showing the new MATE Desktop and distro-specific groups.

It didn’t take long to say yes.

What Is MATE Desktop

MATE Desktop has been around for well over a decade. It started as a continuation of the classic GNOME 2 desktop environment after GNOME shifted to the GNOME 3 interface, and it built a loyal following of users who wanted to keep that traditional, familiar desktop experience alive.

There’s something fitting about a project built around preserving community and continuity finding a home on a forum that exists for exactly the same reason.

Eric and his group now have a dedicated MATE Desktop category on LinuxCommunity.io, distro-agnostic and open to anyone running MATE regardless of the underlying distro. If you’re a MATE user, head over, introduce yourself, and connect with others in the community.

This also gave me the nudge I needed to make some changes I’d been meaning to get to for a while. Members have been asking for dedicated distro categories for some time. Alongside the MATE Desktop category, I’ve added individual categories for Arch Linux, Debian, Fedora/RHEL, and Ubuntu.

New Distro Categories and Tags

New Arch Linux, Debian, Fedora/RHEL, MATE Desktop, and Ubuntu categories.

Each includes distro-specific tags to make filtering and discovery easier. Think pacman and aur for Arch, apt and dpkg for Debian, dnf and selinux for Fedora/RHEL, caja and pluma for MATE Desktop and snap and ppa for Ubuntu.

Growing Community

Also worth mentioning is that our forum crossed 4,000 members on April 3rd 2026, which is a good milestone for a community that grew mostly through word of mouth and useful topics despite not being a support forum for a product or service.

Between the new distro categories, the MATE Desktop group, and steady growth in the existing Linux discussion areas, there’s more going on than there has been in a while.

If you haven’t visited LinuxCommunity.io recently, take another look. There’s a lot of new structure to explore and some new faces worth getting to know.

Tags: community forums, desktop