Linux Lite with the MATE Desktop

[George S Rasmussen]

..It's hard to remember what was yesterday for lunch. This was four years ago with Linux Lite 2.0. Probably changed something with Lightdm.

From my experiance people in the community think that if you install another desktop environment distro/respin breaks.
Some even say that if Gnome is installed then it's no longer that distro. Guys at antiX linux for example.
So if you install and use something that is taboo on the forums you most likely will not get support...

Thanks Misko. I'm not looking for official support per se, just for any hint you can offer relative to installing and running the Mate' desktop on Linux Lite. Having seen photos of your results 4 years ago it's obvious that doing so was possible at that time, and I imagine it still is today. I'm not looking to 'break' anything or create a different distro, just trying to see what Linux Lite 4.2 would be like running the Mate' desktop instead of Xfce, running in a Virtualbox.

In the past I used Gnome 2.x exclusively, and once Mate' was introduced I used it on all my Debian/Ubuntu based systems. In MX Linux I've replaced Xfce with Mate' with flawless results. While I can install Mate' on Linux Lite 4.2 with Synaptic, apparently the option to choose Mate' (or any other DE instead of Xfce) at the login screen has been crippled - for what reason I can only guess. Obviously there's a way to change that and whether or not I find help doing so here in the forum I will figure it out, reporting my results as I go along as you did 4 years ago.

Honestly I think, from what your photos reveal and from my own long time experience running Gnome 2.x and Mate' on all my systems, that Linux Lite running the Mate' desktop would be a great combination, something worth exploring in depth.

I truly hope you're able to contribute to this experiment in a positive way Misko, with any suggestions that might help me get past the login screen hangup I'm presently experiencing.

Thanks much!