Ubuntu MATE creator Martin Wimpress has announced that he no longer has the passion he once had, nor the time, to work on the project:
As another development cycle passes, I find myself lacking the time I once had to work on Ubuntu MATE. And, to be frank, I don’t have the passion for the project that I once had. When I have time to tinker, my interests are elsewhere.
He is now looking to handover the project:
I’m interested in handing over the reins to contributors who do have the time and energy to work on Ubuntu MATE.
What happened?
Martin Wimpress created Ubuntu MATE back in 2014. A fork of the classic GNOME 2, MATE was preferred by people who liked the traditional desktop layout and disliked the newer GNOME 3 design.
Ubuntu MATE was made an official Ubuntu flavor in 2015 and soon gained a fairly decent sized user base.
Things were going well until they were not. Like many side projects created as a hobby, the passion can fade over time or the work may no longer feel challenging enough.
Eventually, Martin decided to step away.
Back then, Martin was working at Canonical as an Engineering Director. He no longer works at Canonical, the parent company of Ubuntu.
He has also switched to NixOS, which is clearly more interesting and challenging for someone with his technical skills.
Martin still makes cool stuff when he gets time. His GitHub repo is a proof of that.
Maintaining a distro takes more effort than most think
Lubuntu has struggled with a lack of contributors. The Ubuntu Unity lead also stepped away.
Not all distros are just a custom-themed desktop environment on top of a base distro. A well-established project like Ubuntu MATE requires significant time and effort. There is upstream code to track, features to test, and much more.
The complexity increases when it is associated as an official flavor of a larger project like Ubuntu. There are standards to follow, quality to maintain, meetings with other Ubuntu flavor developers, strict release schedules, and more.
Then there are additional responsibilities like maintaining documentation and managing the community. It may not seem obvious, but these tasks also take a considerable amount of time. I can relate, as we have to do the same for our forum and nearly ten social channels.
Another thing is that the MATE desktop itself has not seen as much active development as other mainstream desktop environments like KDE and GNOME. The last MATE release came out two years ago.
This could have resulted in a dwindling userbase for Ubuntu MATE. And if that's the case, then it is surely a demotivating factor for any project.
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Is this the end of Ubuntu MATE?
For now, there will be no Ubuntu MATE 26.04 LTS release. Ubuntu 24.04 will be here till April 2027. So we still have a year left before the distro actually becomes unsuable, if it comes to that.
Hopefully, someone will step in. As long as MATE desktop is being developed, no matter how slowly, Ubuntu MATE should live on. I mean it's not the first time it has happened that a project lead moved away and someone else filled the spot.
Let's hope the same happens with Ubuntu MATE.
