Polo has reached its first public release, providing a specialized Wayland compositor for the MATE desktop environment.
Built in C and Vala on top of libweston 16, the project consolidates window management, session handling, and compositor logic.
Developers can integrate their MATE setups with Wayland while maintaining traditional window behaviors, panel support via layer-shell, and existing dconf/GSettings configurations.
Builds are currently available for Fedora, Debian, and Ubuntu.
MATE already had experimental support for Wayland via Wayfire. Polo was designed specifically for MATE and replicates the behavior of Marco, its traditional window manager. Users can continue to use the settings they already had saved for Marco.
With Polo, users can switch windows with Alt+Tab, arrange them with keyboard shortcuts or by dragging them, and use multiple workspaces. There are also the familiar window menus and effects, such as floating windows, desktop cube, and animated changes when minimizing or maximizing a window. Applications built for X11 still work through a compatibility tool.
Polo also takes on tasks that are usually handled by another part of MATE: it automatically launches applications, saves the session, and displays logout or shutdown options. It also supports power management, multiple monitors, hot-plugging and unplugging monitors, saved layouts, and image settings such as color brightness and magnification. Users can even take screenshots and share their screen.
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Polo is still under active development and not all parts of MATE have been ported to Wayland. The mate-settings-daemon still runs through the compatibility system, while its additional features that do not work with Wayland are disabled. Polo also supports the components that mate-panel needs to work. However, some MATE packages distributed by Fedora, including mate-panel, are currently built for X11 only and require versions that support Wayland.
The source code and build instructions for Polo are available on GitHub for Fedora 44/45, Debian 14, and Ubuntu 26.04/26.10. After installation, users can select the "MATE (Polo)" session from the LightDM login screen. Polo is an independent project and has not been officially adopted as a replacement for MATE's existing Wayland solution.
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