How to Install MATE on Ubuntu

Mate is now a matured desktop environment and can easily co-exist with the gnome 3+ and unity. So now you can install it on ubuntu without any issues with any other window managers. In this tutorial I assume you know how to add the PPA in software center and install from the terminal.

Add the Mate repository with the following commands.

sudo add-apt-repository
"deb http://packages.mate-desktop.org/repo/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) main"
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mate-archive-keyring
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mate-core
sudo apt-get install mate-desktop-environment

Once you enter all these commands let the install take it’s time and once install you can reboot and then choose the Mate desktop environment during the login screen. New bugs are cleared everyday and the desktop is quite mature now. And in case if you get any error with your mate desktop, you can report the bug on their official forum. You can also send your fix in their github repository.
If you’re not satisfied with the results of the Mate desktop or you found a lot of bugs in  it and want to remove it. Use the following commands to remove the Mate desktop.

sudo apt-get remove atril atril-common caja caja-common engrampa engrampa-common
ffmpegthumbnailer-caja libcaja-extension libmarco libmate libmate-common libmatecanvas
libmatecomponent libmatecomponentui libmateconf libmatecorba libmatedesktop libmatekbd
libmatekeyring libmatemenu libmatenotify libmatepanelapplet libmatepolkit libmateui
libmatevfs libmateweather libmateweather-common marco marco-common mate-applets
mate-applets-common mate-backgrounds mate-conf mate-conf-common mate-control-center
mate-corba mate-core mate-desktop mate-desktop-common mate-dialogs mate-icon-theme
mate-keyring mate-media mate-menus mate-mime-data mate-panel mate-panel-common
mate-polkit mate-power-manager mate-power-manager-common mate-screensaver
mate-session-manager mate-settings-daemon mate-settings-daemon-common
mate-settings-daemon-gstreamer mate-system-monitor mate-terminal
mate-terminal-common mate-text-editor mate-themes mate-vfs
mate-vfs-common mate-window-manager python-mate

Also you can remove the remaining packages by running the following commands.

sudo apt-get remove libmatesensorsappletplugin mate-calc ate-desktop-environment mate-netspeed mate-sensors-applet mate-system-tools mate-utils mozo python-mate-menu system-tools-backends

As goal of mate is to preserve the traditional desktop which was discontinued by gnome after version 2. You can come back to it anytime and install.