MATE Desktop Prepares for the Future with Polo, a New Wayland Compositor Modeled on Marco

The MATE Desktop Environment has long worn its classic heritage as a badge of honor, embracing a traditional desktop paradigm that feels deliberately rooted in the past. Yet, the devoted community keeping the project alive has its eyes firmly set on the future, a horizon that inevitably includes the transition to Wayland. As the broader Linux ecosystem steadily phases out legacy display servers in favor of modern architectures, the pressure on classic desktop environments to adapt has never been greater. For MATE, navigating this technological shift represents a monumental challenge, but independent development efforts are now offering a compelling glimpse into what a Wayland-native future could look like for the beloved desktop.

Enter Polo, a new Wayland compositor designed specifically for MATE and modeled closely after the desktop environment’s existing X11-based window manager, Marco. Long-time users of Linux will recognize Marco as the reliable window manager that was originally forked from GNOME’s Metacity many years ago, serving as the visual and functional backbone of the MATE desktop experience through countless releases. By building Polo to mirror the behavior of Marco, independent developer Kerem Söke aims to ensure that the transition to Wayland does not upend the familiar user experience that MATE enthusiasts have relied on for generations.

The core philosophy guiding the development of Polo is consistency and familiarity. According to Kerem Söke, who is building the project entirely independently of the core MATE development team, the primary objective is to keep MATE behaving as closely as possible to how it operates on an X11 display server, rather than forcing the desktop environment to conform to the rigid design paradigms of a completely different compositor. This approach stands in stark contrast to other Wayland implementations that often require users to relearn fundamental window management habits or abandon classic desktop workflows altogether.

Constructed using libweston—the reference implementation of a Wayland compositor library—Polo has already achieved a surprising degree of functionality in its early stages of development. Despite being an independent and relatively fresh initiative, the compositor already supports core window management operations, advanced tiling capabilities, and multiple workspaces. Furthermore, it manages critical modern desktop requirements such as clipboard handling, multiple monitor configurations, display scaling, screen sharing capabilities, and comprehensive MATE session management.

Beyond core functionality, Polo even manages to capture some of the nostalgic flair that defined the golden era of Linux customization by including classic desktop effects. Users willing to experiment with the compositor can experience iconic visual eye-candy such as the 3D desktop cube, wobbly windows that dynamically react to movement, and classic window minimization animations like the Magic Lamp effect. These features demonstrate that moving to Wayland does not mean sacrificing the visual personality and playful customization options that have always been a hallmark of traditional Linux desktop environments.

However, bringing Polo to a production-ready state is still an ongoing endeavor. The software is not yet complete or thoroughly tested across a wide variety of hardware configurations and software stacks. Because of this, Söke is actively looking for adventurous volunteers willing to test the compositor on their own hardware and integrate it with the applications they use in their day-to-day computing routines. Unfortunately, participating in this testing phase is not a trivial task for casual users. Polo currently needs to be compiled directly from source code, ideally alongside the latest development builds of the MATE desktop environment to ensure proper compatibility.

The wider context surrounding Polo highlights the difficult position that many legacy Linux desktops currently occupy. Over the past few years, a significant portion of the Linux desktop ecosystem has either completely dropped or significantly scaled back support for the legacy X11 and Xorg display servers. Maintaining support for both display server architectures simultaneously places a tremendous maintenance burden on developers. For smaller desktop projects that inherit older code bases and rely heavily on a limited pool of volunteer contributors, migrating to Wayland is undeniably a tall order requiring substantial engineering effort.

Despite these hurdles, MATE’s official developers have been quietly laying the groundwork for a Wayland future for some time. Recent releases of various MATE components and native applications have introduced incremental Wayland support. Programs such as the Atril document viewer and the Pluma text editor have seen implementation updates, while the Caja file manager has gained the ability to render desktop icons under Wayland environments. Much of this ongoing work happens in dribs and drabs, often remaining dormant unless explicitly enabled with specific compilation flags during the build process.

At present, the MATE project still lacks an official native compositor or a dedicated Wayland session out of the box. While Polo is entirely an independent community effort and not an official part of the MATE roadmap right now, the open-source nature of the project leaves the door wide order for future collaboration. If Polo proves that it can successfully bridge the gap between MATE and Wayland with stability and performance, there is no technical barrier preventing its eventual adoption or integration into the broader MATE ecosystem. For developers and users who wish to examine the source code, track its ongoing development, or contribute to its testing phase, more details and resources are readily available on the official Polo GitHub repository.