WHAT IS MISSING AS DEFAULT IN UBUNTU MATE +24.04 LTS

NOTES

Gold desktop wallpaper

[RESOLVED] You can download it here and you can find other official ubuntu desktop wallpapers here

Trash icon on the below bar¹

[UNRESOLVED] We have to find a way to modify the icon that from the bar is not editable.

White mouse cursor (DMZ-White) as default

[RESOLVED] Ubuntu MATE 24.04 LTS has not installed DMZ-White and it has not setted it as default. But obviously you can install it and set it as default.

Classic Ubuntu Karmic Koala boot loading with black screen and flashing logo [1]

[UNRESOLVED]

Classic Ubuntu Karmic Koala login screen [1] [2] [3]

[UNRESOLVED]

Orange and bordeaux Ubuntu Karmic Koala logo on the top bar (DOWNLOAD: 16 [1]; 22 [2]; 24 [3]; 48 [4]; 64 [5]; rename these files just with “start-here.svg”!)¹

[RESOLVED] (Be careful! Since an update of the package Humanity can broke our mods, you should create a folder .themes in your home folder with the themes of Humanity. What it follows is a procedure that operates with the system files… I should update it soon… If you are in able to do it to yourself change the path of the system folders with the path of .themes in home…)
So, First, I ran the command on MATE find /usr/share/icons/Humanity -name "start-here" in order to locate the Applications menu icon that I wanted to replace with the original Karmic Koala one. I did the same thing on the machine with Karmic Koala installed and transferred the icon files to a USB stick and into separate folders named 16, 22, 24, 48, and 64 which correspond to their pixel sizes. These folders contained the start-here.svg icon files which I placed into a single folder called karmic-to-mate. I then moved this folder onto the MATE system and placed the files into the same directory structure replacing the existing start-here.svg icons that I did not like. I could not simply drag and drop the icons into the Humanity icon directory on MATE because I received a Permission denied error so I had to use the terminal. I opened it by right clicking inside the “karmic to mate” folder which I had placed on the desktop. To transfer the start-here.svg file located in /home/dinosauro-trex/Scrivania/karmic-to-mate/16 into the directory /usr/share/icons/Humanity/places/16 I used the command sudo cp "/home/dinosauro-trex/Scrivania/karmic-to-mate/16/start-here.svg" \ /usr/share/icons/Humanity/places/16/start-here.svg I repeated the same procedure for the other start-here.svg files located in the other folders adapting the number in the command accordingly for each size. After repeating this process for the 22, 24, 48 and 64 folders modifying the folder number in both the input and output paths I updated the icon cache with sudo gtk-update-icon-cache /usr/share/icons/Humanity and finally restarted the panel with mate-panel --replace &

Applications-Places-System menu on the top bar as default¹

[RESOLVED] You can fix this going to MATE Tweak → Panel and click to Traditional

Classic Ubuntu Karmic Koala dropdown menu

[RESOLVED] If you follow what I said in “Human” Window Border with Window Control” you can have a similar dropdown menu that is in Karmic Koala. I consider this issue resolved.

The desktop icon in the below bar

[UNRESOLVED]

The ability to keep updating open caja/nautilus folders of files in real time even though they're past 1000 entries (files/dirs/etc)

[UNRESOLVED] Current caja seems to stop updating folders dynamically when they pass this limit and one must remember to manually refresh.

“Human” Window Border with Window Control

[PARTIALLY RESOLVED] On Ubuntu MATE 24.04 LTS it’s missing the Human Window Border which is, for me, one of the most iconic things Ubuntu Karmic Koala has.
Anyway you can install it from the terminal: sudo apt install human-theme humanity-icon-theme
Then you can set the Window Border (but not the Window Control) from Appearance settings but it is grey. So if you want the traditional Orange or Brown Window Border you have to download these files, it is what occurs for Human-Theme-Gtk (in the moment I’m writing the latest files you can download are “human-theme-3.1.0.tar.gz” updated in 5 may 2026), and copy the folders in the archive in a new folder you will create, called “.themes” (yes with “.”) located in your home directory.
Now you can select the Orange and Brown (and other colors) Window Border, but I didn’t find how to set the Window Control too.
In addition if you try to open a folder and then you press with the mous to the desktop you will see how the text of the windows is white while in Ubunut Karmic Koala the buttons and the text of the folder is black.

Nautilus File Manager (now called also “File”)

[UNRESOLVED] The file manager is a big problem because Caja (the default file manager for MATE) is not like the old Nautilus File Manager and you can see it comparing the icons “back”, “forward”, etc. [1] [2]

Classic Colours of the system

[UNRESOLVED] I don’t know how to put these colours in the modern MATE that I found in Ubuntu Karmic Koala.
Windows (background #EFEBE7; text #101010)
Input Boxes (background #FFFFFF; text #101010)
Selected items (background #FFBE6B; text #101010)
Tool tips (background #F5F5B5; text #101010)

Two Desktop Switch on the below bar¹

[RESOLVED] Right click your window switcher and select preferences for the windows

Classic Icon to logoff, turn off the PC with the name of the user next to it [1]

[UNRESOLVED]

OpenOffice and Nimbus fonts as default instead of LibreOffice and Liberation fonts

[RESOLVED] Fortunately you can install it. But I can understand if it’s not a good idea to implement OpenOffice as a default application… But you can surely change the fonts to Nimbus if it would be a good compromise for you.
If you do what it is written on ““Human” Window Border with Window Control” the Nimbus fonts are integrated.

The Classic Games on Ubuntu Karmic Koala as default

[RESOLVED] I think you can install them.

The way the top bar enlights¹

[PARTIALLY RESOLVED] It is possible to change the way it enlights following what I said above on “Human Window Border and Window Control” but it’s not the original orange in Ubuntu Karmic Koala.

“Day - Month - Number of the day - and hour” in the top bar¹

[PARTIALLY RESOLVED] You can set this “clock” applet switching to the other ones you find in that window when you want to add a new applet.
But you cannot delete the old clock applet (the modern MATE one set by default) in a way that the other applets remain in the top bar easily, because they are all attacched…
Firstly you have to unlock the default applet, then you have to delete it and you should add the applets in this order (like in Ubuntu Karmic Koala), but you cannot have the old graphic and functionalities of the old ones: power button (but MATE doesn’t have the correct applet to replicate the old one of Karmic Koala!), date and clock applet, mail (there isn’t in MATE!), network, keyboard (like iBus), volume and battery.
Obviously the icons in the modern MATE should be all changed and we should discover how to do that.

Screensaver that shows the orange and bordeaux Ubuntu Logo floating [1]

[PARTIALLY RESOLVED] Maybe you can download somewhere?

Ubuntu-font-classic as default

[RESOLVED] Ubuntu font has been subtly changed a few years back. You can install them: sudo apt install fonts-ubuntu-classic
APT will install the classic Ubuntu font and uninstall the modern one.
Then you will set them on MATE:
Application font → Sans Regular 10
Document font → Sans Regular 10
Desktop font → Sans Regular 10
Window title → Sans Bold 10
Fixed width font → Monospace (Monospace Regular) 10

“White” of the top and below bar

[RESOLVED] Right clic on the bars, then Propriety, then Background and de-select the system theme and select the solid color pre-selected

Change in Thunderbird, Brave Browser, and other apps the bar of the app with the bar of the system

[PARTIALLY RESOLVED] You can do it with some apps but you can’t with other apps like Dino, Gnome Software, Dissent, etc.

A browser that fits the Humanity theme with the original scrolling bar etc.

[PARTIALLY RESOLVED] It seems that the best to fit this parameter is SeaMonkey browser… But this browser doesn’t support some things like Whatsapp Web, Reddit, etc...

Black and white Terminal + black and white nano²

[RESOLVED] To disable terminal colors like in Karmic Koala 9.10, I simply opened nano ~/.bashrc and added the following lines at the end:

#Karmic minimal mode
alias ls='ls –color=never'
export LS_COLORS=
alias grep='grep –color=never'
force_color_prompt=no
PS1='\u@\h:\w\$ '
PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\u@\h:\w\$ '
unset color_prompt force_color_prompt

To disable colors in nano, I just opened nano ~/.bashrc and commented out the line include /usr/share/nano/*.nanorc by adding # at the beginning.