Mate desktop on Kali Linux 2017-3

The Mate desktop for Linux seems to be a bit of an outsider, I don`t really know why.

On many distributions of Linux there are four desktops that are commonly available - KDE, Gnome 3, XFCE, and LXDE.

Slowly, almost grudgingly, Mate is also becoming an option.

When the Gnome developers ended the development of Gnome 2, and started producing Gnome 3, there were a lot of negative comments about it, and various developers got together and started to produce a fork of Gnome 2, which in many respects behaves like Gnome 2, but I think - but I am not sure about this - that it is actually built on Gnome 3.

With the demise of Gnome 2, I have gone round in circles a bit trying to find a replacement - I haven`t ever been too keen on KDE, it tends to be a bit over the top in what you can do with it, and historically it used to be very resource hungry.

LXDE and XFCE are both lightweight desktops, good for older hardware, but maybe a bit too lightweight for comfort.

Gnome 3 seems to be taking on Windows 8.1, Windows 10, and MAC`s - fine if that is what you want. In its favour, it is fairly configurable, and you can sort of get it to behave like Gnome 2 in some respects.

Personally, I liked Gnome 2, I liked the way I could set up my desktop, so Mate is an attractive option.

However the Linux distributors seem to be a bit wary of it.

The SUSE Leap 42.3 DVD ISO offers KDE, Gnome 3, XFCE, and LXDE as options when installing from the DVD ISO. If you want Mate then you have to install one of the other ones, or just a basic X11 desktop, then once you have an installed and running version of Leap 42.3, you can go off to the repositories and download Mate.

Alternatively, during the initial installation of Leap 42.3, you can frig the installation to download and install Mate as it goes along.

Kali 2017-3 offers an ISO image that contains the Mate desktop, however that is all it does - it installs Mate, but Kali 2017-3 isn`t set up to use it.

When you start up Kali 2017-3, it goes as far as a command prompt and stops, and you log into a command prompt environment.

So what follows is a set of steps to set Kali to start up into the Mate desktop, as you would expect it to do.

Starting Mate

At the initial command prompt, login as root, and at the new prompt use the command -

       

    startx

This will start up the Mate desktop.

Configure the netowrk

Configure the network connection - the Mate installation doesn`t include any GUI tool for doing this, so you have to edit the appropriate files manually - there are two files that need to be written into.

The first is /etc/network/interfaces - add the following lines for a static IPv4 connection - but of course use your own ip address information, not what is shown here.

       

    auto eth0
    iface eth0 inet static
    address 192.168.1.123
    netmask 255.255.255.0
    broadcast 192.168.1.255
    network 192.168.1.0
    gateway 192.168.1.1

The second file is /etc/resolv.conf - add the DNS server address -

       

    nameserver 8.8.8.8

or the address of whatever DNS server you want to use.

Do a reboot, and with any luck you now have a network connection. If you need DHCP or IPv6, you will need to do your own homework instead of using the above.

Repositories

Add the addresses of the repositories that Kali provide - they need to be added to the file /etc/apt/sources.list.

As a minimum add the folowing line -

       

    deb http://http.kali.org/kali kali-rolling main contrib non-free

You may want to also add the following line -

       

    deb-src http://http.kali.org/kali kali-rolling main contrib non-free

Do an repo update - using the command line -

       

    apt-get update

Install a Window Manager

Install a window manager - now you can do this through the command line using "apt-get install ....", however since we are setting up a GUI desktop using Mate, it makes sense to now download and install the Synaptic package manager - it makes finding packages to install a lot easier, and also takes care of compatibility.

So again, at the command line -

       

    apt-get install synaptic

Eventually the Synaptic Package Manager will appear in the System / Administration menu top left of the Mate desktop.

Dig down into the Gnome Desktop Environment section, find the package "gdm3", and install it.

Reboot - and you should get a GUI login screen. It doesn`t seem to matter whether you select the X11 Default desktop or the Mate desktop, they both go to the Mate desktop.

....................................

PS - another package that is well worth installing from the Gnome Desktop Environment section is "gnome-nettool" - it was always part of Gnome 2, and is very useful for doing quick network checks.

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