Hello Linux Geeksters. As you may know, Ubuntu Mate 14.10 Utopic Unicorn has been released along with the official Ubuntu 14.10 flavors.
Now, the developers have released Ubuntu Mate 14.04.1 using Ubuntu 14.04.1 as code base, as the name suggests. They have taken this decision due to the fact that Ubuntu 14.04 is a LTS (long term supported) release and some users prefer to keep LTS versions until the next long term supported system gets released. And Ubuntu Mate 14.04.1 will reach EOL in 2019.
Despite the fact that the Ubuntu 14.04.1 code base is older than Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu Mate 14.04.1 has borrowed a bunch of features from Ubuntu Mate 14.10, including the Mate 1.8.2 desktop.
This is what Martin Wimpress, the main Ubuntu Mate developer said:
“This release is unusual in that it is based on Ubuntu MATE 14.10 but adds a number of new features and fixes many bugs. Although this is a 14.04 release you can consider it a newer version than 14.10 but many of the changes outlined below have already been released to Ubuntu MATE 14.10 via updates,”
For those who don’t know yet, Ubuntu Mate comes with a bunch of Ubuntu optimizations that will not be added if you just install plain Mate over Ubuntu 14.04.
