DarkMate: setting up a clean MATE desktop with SLiM

Hello everyone,

I have been dissatisfied with the performance of GNOME on my FreeBSD desktop, and since XFCE seems to be in development hell, I was forced to try out MATE as a light-weight desktop alternative. After a few weeks, I like it so much now that I re-wrote my old desktopInstall.sh script into a MATE-only version with custom themeing. Have a look at my GitHub for the script and a few more screenshots: https://github.com/broozar/installDesktopFreeBSD/tree/DarkMate12

Besides giving you a beautiful dark desktop, the script also solves a number of common problems:
- SLiM defaulting to the US keyboard instead of using your local layout: solved by using a custom keyboard conf file
- SLiM theme looking rather bland: solved by automatically installing ross' beautiful theme and altering the conf file for you
- MATE session not starting up: the scripts creates .xinitrc files for you
- Saving dconf settings and moving them to another machine for themeing: thanks to this forum post, the script has a solution for that too

If you are interested in these solutions, have a look at the script source, it comes with a lot of comments. Feedback welcome.
 

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Can you use the script if you already have Mate installed, or do you just installed the themes?
The script is intended to set up a new machine that has nothing on it other than a minimal system. I don't see why it wouldn't work if some of the software was already installed, but no promises.
 
A new version of DarkMate is out: Version 12.1 comes with better theming for both MATE and SLiM, cleaner code, experimental Nvidia support, new keyboard shortcuts, bugfixes, and a tidier software selection.

As always, the repository and instructions can be found on GitHub: https://github.com/broozar/installDesktopFreeBSD
 

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If you are interested in these solutions, have a look at the script source, it comes with a lot of comments. Feedback welcome.

Same boat for me, I haven't used Mate in ages but on FreeBSD it's clean and scorching fast, and it looks great these days too. I've switched over to it and this thread came up because I was looking for theming ideas. Thanks for these links, this is cool. I need to install DarkMate immediately.
 
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