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.
@hydn Thank you very much for giving us Ubuntu MATE users and all MATE desktop users a good home!
@hydn Thank you very much to yourself and @ericmarceau to ensure that the community we have built specially in the Ubuntu MATE forum, especially concerning the welcoming of all users of MATE regardless of underlying distro, can continue with a great new home!
From a very grateful Jaymo