For me, Ubuntu's April 2011 switch from GNOME to Unity was traumatic. I remember that at that time I was using a "netbook", that is, one of those smaller and more limited laptops where Ubuntu 10.10 worked perfectly, but six months later I could hardly use it. That's when I started testing alternatives, and I was using Linux Mint until martin wimpress thought it was a good idea to bring back the classic Ubuntu desktop.
In October 2014, the developer released the first version of Ubuntu MATE, and it was my favorite distribution for several years, until some bugs in my laptop (personal experience), made me go back to Ubuntu, but already in a 15.6-inch where the performance was no longer so bad. Shortly after, already in 2015, Canonical included Ubuntu MATE as an official flavor, and that was the moment when Martin Wimpress began to be part of the team of the company led by Mark Shuttleworth.
Martin Wimpress will continue to be part of the family, but with less prominence
In recent years, Wimpress has been working in various positions at Canonical. On the one hand, he is the lead developer of Ubuntu MATE; for other, has been at the forefront or leading the Ubuntu desktop, to the point of being himself the one who has been responsible for reporting many news related to the project, such as changes in the software and tweaks in the design. All of this is going to end soon.
This was just communicated on the social network Twitter:
I'll soon⏳be leaving Canonical. I'm very excited to be joining the fine people @SlimDevOps? Despite the change, I'll continue to lead @ubuntu_mate; it's my passion? project. Naturally, I'll remain an enthusiastic #Ubuntu & Snapcraft community contributor?
- Martin ? Wimpress (@m_wimpress) February 2, 2021
Soon I will be leaving Canonical. I'm so excited to join the good folks at @SlimDevOps. Despite the change, I will continue to lead @ubuntu_mate; it is my passion project. Naturally, I will continue to be a #Ubuntu enthusiast AND a contributor to the Snapcraft community.
In addition to continuing to work on Ubuntu MATE, which he defines as his passion, he will also continue to be an Ubuntu enthusiast and Snapcraft community contributor, that is, of the software related to Canonical's Snap packages.
And where is it going? Well to slim.ai, what it is a project whose objective is to develop tools to help create production containers quickly. Personally, I cannot say that it is something that interests me especially, but I think it will improve with the arrival of the developer who made me return to Ubuntu after trying several distributions based on the Canonical system, among which I remember that there was also elementary OS . Whatever happens, good luck, Martin.
I think a lot of Linux users use certain distributions because of the expensive post-development. MATE isn't particularly light or pretty, it's just nostalgia that Mr. Wimpress took advantage of. Without a doubt, your community is healthy, like many others that have recently been created, and let it continue.
Docker Docker Docker everywhere !! : /