More distro adventures: Here be a super-long, detailed review of Ubuntu MATE 18.04 Bionic Beaver, tested on a laptop with UEFI, GPT and a multi-boot Windows-and-Linux setup, covering live session testing, installation and post-install usage, including look & feel, networking - Wireless, Bluetooth, Samba sharing, and printing, multimedia support - HD video and MP3 playback, smartphone support - Android, iPhone and Windows Phone, partitioning, package management via amazing Boutique, updates, applications and extras, customization - various tweaks, Mutiny layout and global menu, cool features, hardware compatibility, webcam, touchpad, suspend & resume, performance, responsiveness, resource utilization, power management, battery life, stability, numerous visual glitches and bugs, crashes, and more. Have fun. https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/ubuntu-beaver-mate.html Cheers, Mrk
That's not the bottom panel - that's a dock. But you can add new panels anywhere you want in MATE, and then add to the panel an applet that shows open windows (window list). Right-click on the panel, add to panel. You can see several examples around this in the review, and if you get stuck, take a look at the window list in the top panel - that's the applet you need. Mrk
After reading the Unix Doctor's (who else: Mrkvonic) review of Ubuntu MATE, I decided to give this distro a test drive yesterday. After running it for a few hours, I'm impressed and I am NOT at all easily impressed these days! It boots quickly and runs very well on two low-end machines I have tested it on, even from a USB stick. I think I am gonna replace Mint Mate on one of my Linux machines with this distro to see if I continue to like it, but I am pretty darn sure I will. For those of you sick and tired of chasing your tail around like a little kitten with Windows 7 & 10, do yourself a BIG favor and try a Linux distro or two. Even if you don't like Linux, you will at least have seen Life On The Other Side! And if you have "obsolete" older laptops sitting around (like the defunct Netbooks), many Linux distros run amazingly well on them. The number of Windows machines I have are diminishing at a rate I never thought possible.
I concur this is the best flavor amongst 18.04 ones. About encryption during installation, it's still there but you have to select it upon creating partitions otherwise that is not offered anymore (unlike previous releases which offered to encrypt home folder at user creation step)
