I'm doing some battery life testing on the Framework 13 and just discovered that Ubuntu MATE 24.04 retired the Welcome screen.

I'm doing some battery life testing on the Framework 13 and just discovered that Ubuntu MATE 24.04 retired the Welcome screen. That's really disappointing. I thought that was quite a strength, especially being able to shift desktop layouts/paradigms on the fly.

New users will really miss that. I sure do

@killyourfm Was it replaced with anything, or is it just completely gone? Is their Software Boutique gone too? I agree that's disappointing, it was a really nice feature of Ubuntu MATE

@Akzel I haven't seen anything that replaces it. MATE Tweak only has some basic panel and window customizations.

And Software Boutique was replaced with App Center...

AND it gets an hour less battery life than Fedora 40 using the same rundown test?!

Well, now my disappointment is doubled. I was honestly expecting it to have better power efficiency.

This is not what I was expecting from Ubuntu MATE based on the times I used it circa 2019/2020.

Well, let's try Peppermint OS next.

@killyourfm Interesting. I am mostly running Nobara GNOME these days and hearing the battery life getting that tanked using such a simple interface is genuinely surprising.

@ernie Yea, it feels as if something (I don't know what) has changed with MATE...

Background on this testing: I'm specifically looking for lightweight / power efficient distros (that still have a nice aesthetic) for long backpacking trips, or just extended periods of time out in nature.

@killyourfm Not a bad idea. I will note that, if you’re willing to test a different machine, I average 10+ hours on Asahi Fedora Remix on my M1 MacBook Air.

I get why the Framework is a good choice for this, though.

@ernie But... I also have an M1 MacBook Pro. Hmm.
What's your rough workload/activity for that 10+ hours? That's quite good!

@ernie One note about the Framework though: the standby battery life is the machine's Achilles heel. It drains about 1% per hour, which is awful.

@killyourfm Watching videos, surfing, and screwing around on various projects. It’s a laze-about machine. (I use an HP Envy as my main machine, mostly because of screen size.) Probably wouldn’t get that playing a game. But the GPU optimizations the Asahi team have made it equivalent to running on MacOS battery-wise.

@ernie OK, awesome! Then it's definitely time to finally try Linux on Apple Silicon!

@killyourfm oh wow. That nuts. I know on my 2018 X1 Carbon any Ubuntu spin gets terrible battery life. I wonder what the cause is.

@baltmatrix What distro do you lean on for long battery life? Ordinarily I'd go with something using Xfce, but that's still not ready to play nice with 3K/4K screens