Should we do something about packages like ubuntu-mate-desktop changing things such as GRUB boot menu color?

One of the major issues about using third-party software or whatever is that, it tries making advantage of your whole damn system.

You’d need the “ubuntu-mate-package” or whatever in order to get the latest. However, they think its ok to download things. This has lead to installing things that we don’t need-people just want the desktop, not to upgrade themselves from Ubuntu 18.10 to Ubuntu MATE 18.10 but keeping leftover crap from the GNOME 3 Desktop.

Perhaps there should be a way to cleanly switch between desktop environments without rebranding your system and making unnecessary changes, and a way to use a metapackage as a pointer for all kinds of packages to remove. It would be nice to say you don’t want, for example, XFCE any more, and when removing the xfce-desktop transitional package, it would also remove all of the packages it points to that aren’t marked as “manually installed”.

It seems that you do not understand how APT dependencies and recommendations are working. Currently almost every desktop meta package install theme for Plymouth:

$ apt-cache depends ubuntu-desktop | egrep "grub|plymouth"
  Recommends: plymouth-theme-ubuntu-logo

$ apt-cache depends kubuntu-desktop | egrep "grub|plymouth"
  Recommends: plymouth-theme-kubuntu-logo
  Recommends: plymouth-theme-kubuntu-text

$ apt-cache depends ubuntu-mate-desktop | egrep "grub|plymouth"
  Recommends: plymouth-theme-ubuntu-mate-logo
  Recommends: plymouth-theme-ubuntu-mate-text

just got this on Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS.

On 16.04 LTS MATE has theme for GRUB :

$ apt-cache depends ubuntu-mate-desktop | egrep "grub|plymouth"
  Depends: grub2-themes-ubuntu-mate
  Depends: plymouth-theme-ubuntu-mate-logo
  Depends: plymouth-theme-ubuntu-mate-text

and it is great! Thanks, @Wimpress!

Simply use --no-install-recommends to not install unneeded stuff. Or use core or minimal packages…

Moreover, I think if you plan to create Cinnamon remix, then you must (!) draw nice looking themes for GRUB and Plymouth. This is how marketing and branding should work! It will attract attention on your remix in publicly located computers and laptops.

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In Ubuntu Studio, we even forked the Ubuntu MATE grub theme (still waiting for upload on that, but that’s another story). I saw what they had done and thought that, with Ubuntu Studio being a flavor that targets artists, it should have a great user experience from (pre-)boot to shut-down. And what better way to make an impression than make the first thing people see somewhat eye-catching!

2 Likes

Sorry for not updating- --no-install-recommends works well.

However there should be a message when installing saying that if you just want to install the desktop by itself, type in --no-install-recommends, and then it lists optional packages (such as ubuntu-mate wallpapers, etc)

We stopped seeding the GRUB theme for Ubuntu MATE during the Zesty cycle due to this bug:

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Alright. Seems good, but will that mean for Ubuntu MATE or when people do apt-get install ubuntu-mate-desktop?

And also that only works for Zesty, it doesn’t work for now.