I’ve recently made the switch over to Ubuntu MATE and am really enjoying the level of customizability it offers without being too complicated or too much of a resource-hog. Out of the box the OS offers some great layouts through the MATE-tweak tool but I’ve created my own which is compact but still usable.

The layout takes elements of the Mutiny panel layout (i.e. the Unity-like one) and compresses them further into a single main panel on the left without taking up room on top.

The following two files are all that is needed on Ubuntu MATE to copy the layout:

Multimond-tweak.layout

Multimond-tweak.panel

When downloaded run the following two commands from their directory to copy the files to their required location within Ubuntu MATE:

sudo cp Multimond-tweak.layout /usr/share/mate-panel/layouts/Multimond-tweak.layout

sudo cp Multimond-tweak.panel /usr/share/mate-panel/layouts/Multimond-tweak.panel

Once added you should be able to open the MATE tweak tools and select Multimond under panels.

To make the clock fit you may need to make the following changes in dconf with the following 2 commands:

dconf write /org/mate/panel/objects/clock/prefs/format "'custom'"

dconf write /org/mate/panel/objects/clock/prefs/custom-format "'%a%n%d %b%n%H:%M'"

I’ve also put together a version for dual screens which hides a panel at the bottom of the second screen which can be very useful sometimes.

The following 2 files are used for this layout:

Multimond-dual-tweak.layout

Multimond-dual-tweak.panel

These files can then be made selectable in MATE tweak with the following 2 commands:

sudo cp Multimond-dual-tweak.layout /usr/share/mate-panel/layouts/Multimond-dual-tweak.layout

sudo cp Multimond-dual-tweak.panel /usr/share/mate-panel/layouts/Multimond-dual-tweak.panel

For those interested, the theme in the screenshots is Arc-Darker, the icons are ePapirus

I’d be interested in hearing if anyone makes their own spins of the layout.