Suggestion: Use MATE applications in the eventual Unity 7 flavor of Ubuntu 18.04

[Norbert]

@chanath

They don’t work. Right clicking doesn’t open the terminal and Caja s root.

It may be caused by well-known bug 1713311 (see @Wimpress 's comment 17 on it)
and/or bug 1713313 (see my comment 33 on it).

I have installed Bionic Beaver 18.04 LTS from mini.iso on KVM.
I added MATE desktop here (on x11 of course), recently installed caja-admin package.
It normally opens Caja as Administrator (window title is Desktop (as superuser), I’m able to create and delete new file in /, Open in Terminal opens with root@hostname# prompt ).

[khurshid-alam]

@Wimpress

@Wimpress

What doesn’t or might not work

Right clicking on the desktop provides an option to Change Desktop Background which attempts to launch mate-appearance-properties. That will need a patch to launch to appropriate Unity alternative when the desktop session is Unity.

Yes.

@Wimpress

Does Unity Control Center expose UI to configure Nautilus? If so those would need changing to reference Caja. caja-file-management-properties.desktop could also be modified so it is exposed in Unity Control Center. Trivial, but not essential.

No. UCC doesn’t expose anything nautilus related. But let me recheck.

@Wimpress

There are likely many other integration points, your test feedback is welcome

Ubuntu has patched nautilus with quicklist integration which shows bookmarks and common actions when you right click on the launcher. It also shows progress when during copying files. For bookmarks , I think, we can use static quicklist instead of dynamic which involves only modifying caja.desktop. For progessbar a patch is needed. But the problem is Canonical deleted all unity api references and atm only doc packages are available…I am trying to move all api docs to read-the-docs or something similar.

With nautilus we have nautilus-action to add custom context-menu items. Is there anything similar for caja ?

[khurshid-alam]

@Wimpress

@Wimpress

Just having a coffee and a play with mate-user-share on Ubuntu Unity. It’s stands alone and making some minor changes to the .desktop file exposes it in Unity Control Center. That modification could be carried as a distro patch or upstreamed.

Just one question. Public folder in nautilus shows an infobar button as ‘preferences’ which launches gnome-user-share-properties. But the code is in gnome-user-share and whole thing works as a nautilus-extension. So if we want to stay with nautilus and what can be done for this?

a) We patch mate-user-share to use nautilus instead of caja (only extension part) and carry that as distro patch.
b) We fork mate-user-share
c) We fork gnome-user-share

What do you think ?

[manbutu]

For me would like unity 8 application maybe help ubport https://ubports.com
I see ubuntu file manger and ubuntu music app

[Wimpress]

@khurshid-alam

With nautilus we have nautilus-action to add custom context-menu items. Is there anything similar for caja ?

There is caja-action but upstream nautilus-action had a name change and now supports multiple file managers including Caja. Ideally that needs packaging then we can all use one project.

[Wimpress]

@khurshid-alam

So if we want to stay with nautilus and what can be done for this?

I’ll have to have an investigate. Gut feeling it a distro patch for mate-user-share to support Nautilus.

[Wimpress]

@dale-f-beaudoin

Did not create:

Sorry, typo is my notes it should be Create /usr/share/applications/caja-unity.desktop. I’ve updated the notes above too.

[nickthom]

The Ubuntu MATE Welcome Screen. We could use this as well and change the messages accordingly.
Just let us know when the new ISO is ready.

[dale-f-beaudoin]

The jury is still out on this. As @popey said, some of these changes would represent too drastic a change as to what unity users are used to. Also there is mention to leave nautilus in and make some inserts with caja - so I may wait a bit until next .ISO (hopefully this week) and install caja and a few things and put it up as soon as I can.

[dale-f-beaudoin]

@nickthom
As per previous discussion on this topic.

@Wimpress

So if we want to stay with nautilus and what can be done for this?

I’ll have to have an investigate. Gut feeling it a distro patch for mate-user-share to support Nautilus.

[mohan-ram]

I have two questions, first what video player does Ubuntu MATE use (I seem to can not remember) and can Unity use the same? Second question can these core applications be snaps? This way newer versions can be updated on a LTS.

[biohazara]

@dale-f-beaudoin

The jury is still out on this. As @popey said, some of these changes would represent too drastic a change as to what unity users are used to. Also there is mention to leave nautilus in and make some inserts with caja - so I may wait a bit until next .ISO (hopefully this week) and install caja and a few things and put it up as soon as I can.

@popey As a non-technical user, I think that CSD apps and the eventual removal of headerbar patches (not sure if it’s already happening in 18.04) on those that usually ship by default in Ubuntu (as they are no longer necessary in GNOME) are a more drastic change for Unity users than MATE apps, hence my suggestion to use them, including Caja.

I do get that this still represents a big change, but long term, as GNOME continues to evolve, I think it’s best for Unity7 to stick to usage paradigms of its pre-CDS era, and MATE represents that.

I’m using all Ubuntu MATE default apps in Ubuntu 16.04 with Unity at the moment, with the exception of Caja (I’m using a patched Nemo instead) and everything feels more in line with the post-13.04 design of Unity7, and so everything looks more consistent, like it was in 14.04.

@dale-f-beaudoin

I’ll be doing an ISO build with caja and mate software as includes later today or tommorrow. Anything else I should put in there for experimental?

@dale-f-beaudoin is this going to be available for testing? I’d suggest simply include Ubuntu MATE’s selection of default apps (includes VLC as the default video player instead of Totem, for example).

[dale-f-beaudoin]

@biohazara

I’m using all Ubuntu MATE default apps in Ubuntu 16.04 with Unity at the moment, with the exception of Caja (I’m using a patched Nemo instead) and everything feels more in line with the post-13.04 design of Unity7, and so everything looks more consistent, like it was in 14.04.

@khurshid-alam had mentioned that he would like to try nemo for 18.10 so I am relying heavily on many of his driections atm.

@biohazara

I’ll be doing an ISO build with caja and mate software as includes later today or tommorrow. Anything else I should put in there for experimental?

@dale-f-beaudoin is this going to be available for testing? I’d suggest simply include Ubuntu MATE’s selection of default apps (includes VLC as the default video player instead of Totem, for example).

Yes … it will be available through http://people.ubuntu.com/~twocamels/archive/

But I have not yet built it.

[biohazara]

@dale-f-beaudoin

@khurshid-alam had mentioned that he would like to try nemo for 18.10 so I am relying heavily on many of his driections atm.

That decision makes perfect sense to me, including the fact that it’s for 18.10, and not 18.04. I guess the question is how consistent Nautilus will be on Unity7 on 18.04. I haven’t tried it yet though.

I personally really like to use my current 16.04 setup: Ubuntu MATE defaut apps on Unity7 and Nemo, and I look forward to use this in 18.04.

I do wonder if Nemo’s patches needed for Unity integration will still allow it to work on Cinnamon (which is, as far as I know, in the Ubuntu repos, if someone wants to use it).

@dale-f-beaudoin

Yes … it will be available through http://people.ubuntu.com/~twocamels/archive/

But I have not yet built it.

I’ll keep an eye on it, thanks!

[dale-f-beaudoin]

@biohazara

But I have not yet built it.

I’ll keep an eye on it, thanks!

Thanks for your patience.

[biohazara]

@dale-f-beaudoin

Thanks for your patience.

No, thank you for your hard work and for taking my suggestion in consideration!

[biohazara]

I see you built an image with caja instead of nautilus. I quickly tested it in live mode, and here’s what I’ve found:

• Trash button on Unity’s dash doesn’t seem to work;
• Unity’s dash color doesn’t adapt to caja’s desktop background;
• Unity’s display properties does’t show the correct desktop background.
• Caja isn’t pinned to Unity’s dash by default on the image you built (even though it seems to behave correct if I do pin it, even though it doesn’t have the expected shortcuts when you right click on it in the dash);
• Killing caja on the terminal and execute caja --force-desktop means caja won’t integrate with global menu anymore. However, I didn’t test if caja --force-desktop --no-default-window would work as intended though.
• Right-clicking on the desktop and select to change background doesn’t seem to work, which means mate-appearance-properties isn’t installed, as @Wimpress explained before.

I think all this stuff is kinda expected at this point, but I felt I should point it out, since it stands out almost immediately.

[dale-f-beaudoin]

@biohazara
Yes… I am working on this. I just put that up there. I know it is broke. I just want simple feedback of how caja “looks”.

Does it fit?
Is it too old looking?
Is it a move forward or backward?

Also the .ISO installs quicker and exits without any errors.

[biohazara]

@dale-f-beaudoin

Yes… I am working on this. I just put that up there. I know it is broke.

Makes sense

I’ll talk about it in the new thread you posted.

[biohazara]

If anyone is interested in trying on how MATE apps look in Unity 7 (except for caja), using while testing the new 18.04 ISOs, here’s how you can do it:

sudo apt install mate-calc pluma engrampa eom mate-system-monitor mate-terminal atril vlc

If you don’t want to just compare and want to use these apps as defaults, then you can follow the following steps, based on this guide:

• Remove substituted packages:

  sudo apt remove gnome-calculator gedit file-roller eog gnome-system-monitor gnome-terminal evince totem
  

NOTE: removing gnome-calculator also removes unity-scope-calculator, which I have no idea if it can be patched to work with mate-calc

• Change and fix default application for some MIME (file) types:

  # Images:
  xdg-mime default eom.desktop image/bmp
  xdg-mime default eom.desktop image/gif
  xdg-mime default eom.desktop image/jpeg
  xdg-mime default eom.desktop image/x-pcx
  xdg-mime default eom.desktop image/png
  xdg-mime default eom.desktop image/tiff
  # Plain text:
  xdg-mime default pluma.desktop text/plain
  xdg-mime default pluma.desktop text/x-log
  xdg-mime default pluma.desktop application/x-perl
  xdg-mime default pluma.desktop application/javascript
  xdg-mime default pluma.desktop application/rdf+xml
  # If you want for Wine plain text files:
  xdg-mime default pluma.desktop application/x-wine-extension-ini
  xdg-mime default pluma.desktop application/x-wine-extension-vbs
  xdg-mime default pluma.desktop text/x-csrc
  xdg-mime default pluma.desktop application/x-wine-extension-inf
  # PDF:
  xdg-mime default atril.desktop application/pdf
  

• Set new default terminal emulator:

  sudo update-alternatives --install "$(which x-terminal-emulator)" x-terminal-emulator "$(which mate-terminal)" 30
  sudo update-alternatives --set x-terminal-emulator "$(which mate-terminal)"