Here’s what my main (desktop) machine looks like.
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Discovered two things. One - neofetch no longer works, and fastfetch isn’t very attractive. Also, screen captures no long save - so I copied to clipboard and pasted into gimp.
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Yeah, a couple weeks ago, while I was trying 26.04 on a couple Ubuntu flavors, I noticed Neofetch wasn’t even on the repos. Looked around and found out that it’s been discontinued two years ago 
It’s still on repositories for flavors and distros based on previous Ubuntu versions, I guess until 24.04 as an LTS reaches end of life next year.
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Been using MATE pretty much since in forked. I’ve tried it here and there on many distros. Mostly i’ve used Debian and then Devuan. Here’s my setup (let’s see if this works):
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Hi, @sgage 
Welcome to the community!
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Thanks! Good to find this place… 
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@sgage never hurts to join the Mate group here!
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When the big systemd “existential crisis” came up, I almost jumped onto Devuan, but backed away.
How are you finding Devuan? Can you share any opinion regarding
- operational stability?
- operational performance?
- timeliness of upstream updates being integrated?
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"When the big systemd “existential crisis” came up, I almost jumped onto Devuan, but backed away.
How are you finding Devuan?"
=====
Devuan MATE has been my daily driver since the ‘existential crisis’ (great characterization). The way that all came down was creepy and dishonest, IMO. Left a very bad taste…
Devuan’s default DE is XFCE, which I just don’t care for. I think the default should be MATE 
Seriously, it seems a perfect match.
Your questions:
- operational stability?
It’s Debian at base. Very together. Over these years, I completely assume that stuff just works. It has been rock solid for me. Well, just like Debian.
- operational performance?
It’s Debian without systemd. I check out Debian MATE from time to time, and perfomance seems (informally, anecdotally, no benchmarks,etc.) identical.
It really is Debian without systemd, which leads to your last question…
- timeliness of upstream updates being integrated?
Except for those packages that Devuan has been forced to rework to avoid systemd entanglements, it picks up Debian updates exactly as soon as Debian. If apt requests a regular Debian package, the request is simply passed through to the Debian repos. The secret sauce is Amprolla
Those packages that do need to be reworked are not a problem through most of the cycle. But with every new version, Debian makes things harder by quietly introducing new systemd dependencies. This is why there is a month or so delay between a Debian release and the corresponding Devuan relese. The Devuan guys are very good at responding and fixing things up, but one wonders how long they can keep up. Debian is almost militantly making things harder, seems to me.
I intend to use Devuan as long as they can do it. Great people, great community. We’ll see what shakes out.
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Thank you! I agree that systemd is getting steadily more complex. It is the nature of the beast!
Just curious, has Debian stopped offering the non-systemd “flavour”?
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Debian stopped offering a non-systemd option pretty much when they adopted systemd back in Jessie.
I found this amusing… out of curiosity, I did a search on ‘does Debian offer a non-systemd option?’
The answer: “Yes, Debian offers a non-systemd option through Devuan, which is a fork of Debian that does not use systemd as its init system.”
I’m not sure whether either project would be particularly happy with that characterization 
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Coincidence that I ran into this thread talking about systemd.
Last week, I actually switched to Void Linux. I’m running now on it Niri with the Noctalia shell. It’s been a blast so far (we’ll see how it is out of the honeymoon phase though).
I really am not missing systemd. My boot times and general speed feel so much better now than on Ubuntu Unity (off-topic, but Ubuntu Unity 26.04 was the only distro I EVER had a kernel panic, unfortunately).
Got my VM services up and going with runit, and happily have my Ubuntu 26.04 + MATE desktop in a VM, and it feels snappy.
Jaymo
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“systemd” was always a server-centric evolution, not a desktop-centric one, in my view.
It implements the “corporate” mentality of detachable and pluggable modules, which as experienced in the gaming world, adds layers of APIs that increasingly reduce responsiveness.
System V had a lot going for it!
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I completely agree @ericmarceau . Without all the various modules, it feels very easy to just enable services by creating symlinks. It makes logical sense to me.
In that vain (if it is okay) I would like to update my platform configuration. This is Ubuntu 26.04 + MATE Desktop running in a VM on Void LInux.
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Exactly!
Elegance and performance thru simplicity!
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I love this setup - simple yet very functional!
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@guiverc: I believe neofetch is still available in the repositories for Ubuntu MATE 24.04.4 (the latest LTS release). Were you referring to releases based on Ubuntu 26.04?
in addition to fastfetch, the repositories also carry two other currently maintained forks of neofetch: hyfetch, which decorates its output with pride colors; and neowofetch, which is essentially hyfetch without the pride colors, for those who prefer such. (I think the “wo” in neowofetch may stand for “without”.)
Here are the configurations for my two MATE platforms:
Desktop:
OS: Ubuntu MATE 24.04.4 LTS x86_64
Host: NUC6CAYH J26843-411
Kernel: 6.8.0-124-generic
Uptime: 1 day, 19 hours, 3 mins
Packages: 3557 (dpkg), 44 (flatpak), 42 (snap)
Shell: bash 5.2.21
Resolution: 1920x1080
DE: MATE
WM: Metacity (Marco)
WM Theme: YaruOk
Theme: YaruOk [GTK2/3]
Icons: mate [GTK2/3]
Terminal: mate-terminal
Terminal Font: Monospace 12
CPU: Intel Celeron J3455 (4) @ 2.300GHz
GPU: Intel HD Graphics 500
Memory: 4312MiB / 7789MiB
Laptop:
OS: Ubuntu MATE 24.04.4 LTS x86_64
Host: 82G4 IdeaPad Flex 3 11ADA05
Kernel: 6.8.0-124-generic
Uptime: 3 days, 23 hours, 54 mins
Packages: 2551 (dpkg), 31 (flatpak), 23 (snap)
Shell: bash 5.2.21
Resolution: 1920x1080
DE: MATE 1.26.1
WM: Metacity (Marco)
Theme: YaruOk [GTK2/3]
Icons: mate [GTK2/3]
Terminal: mate-terminal
Terminal Font: Ubuntu Mono 13
CPU: AMD Athlon Silver 3050e with Radeon Graphics (4) @ 1.400GHz
GPU: AMD ATI Radeon Vega Series / Radeon Vega Mobile Series
Memory: 2164MiB / 3299MiB
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