Update MATE Desktop Environment on Raspbian

Question

How can I update MATE with the version on this

https://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianMate

I want to update the MATE 1.6 version on the above version to the latest MATE 1.8.

Do I have to reinstall it, or is there an easier way?

Answer 1

Looking here, it seems the only version of MATE in the Raspbian repositories currently is 1.8,¹ and that their own web page is not up to date.

First, make sure the local records are up to date:

sudo apt-get update

Then try apt-cache showpkg mate-desktop. If you get nothing, see the footnote. If you get some information including:

Versions: 
1.8.1+dfsg1-2

You should be good to go. You could try:

sudo apt-get install --only-upgrade mate-desktop

Note there are a bunch of packages involved in the desktop and this may or may not update all of them. I recommend you just:

apt-get update

Which will do the whole system. This may take a while; you may also run into complications if you've added jessie to your repo as per the footnote but not done a dist-upgrade.

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1. But it does not seem to be on the package list for Raspbian wheezy; if I try apt-cache search mate-desktop on a wheezy pi I actually get nothing (hmmph...). It shows up on a jessie pi, though. You may not have to dist-upgrade but I think you likely will, see How can I access Raspbian Jessie packages from Wheezy?