Rebuilding the MATE Desktop from Fedora 28 for CentOS 8

Download the Fedora 28 release repo and gpg key RPMs:

https://ftp-stud.hs-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/archive.fedoraproject.org/fedora/linux/links/release/28/Everything/x86_64/os/Packages/f/fedora-repos-28-1.noarch.rpm

https://ftp-stud.hs-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/archive.fedoraproject.org/fedora/linux/links/release/28/Everything/x86_64/os/Packages/f/fedora-gpg-keys-28-1.noarch.rpm

Double-click on each rpm in /home/<userid>/Downloads/. Extract the release repos to the local directory, then cp them to /etc/yum.repos.d/. Edit each to find “$releasever” and replace it with “28”.

Extract the gpg keys to an unused folder like /home/user/Public, then mv them to
/etc/pki/rpm-gpg/.

Return to the .repo files. Append “priority=1” to every stanza of the CentOS repo files. Append “priority=2” to every stanza of the Fedora repo files.

If it is not already installed, run

# dnf -y install yum-plugin-priorities

Recheck all these preliminary steps before proceeding.

After the preliminaries are confirmed, run each of the following:

# yum install python2-six

# yum install mate* -x mate*devel* -x mate-menu

# yum groupinstall “MATE” --skip-broken

# yum groupinstall “MATE Desktop” --skip-broken

$ echo “exec /usr/bin/mate-session” >> ~/.xinitrc

# init 6   ← reboot

Select MATE desktop at the login screen

The following packages will be skipped during the MATE group installation:

exaile-3.4.5-8.fc28.noarch			python2-gstreamer-0.1022-17.fc28.i686|x86_64
system-config-users-1.3.8-5.noarch

The following packages will be downgraded during the MATE group installation:

newt.0.52.20-8.fc28				python3-newt-0.52.20-8.fc28

The following packages will be skipped during the MATE Desktop group installation:

dnf-2.7.5-12.fc28.noarch			dnf-yum-2.7.5-12.fc28.noarch
exaile-3.4.5-8.fc28.noarch			python2-gstreamer-010.22-17.fc28.i686|x86_64
system-config-users-1.3.8-5.noarch
xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.19.6-10.fc28-x86_64
xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.19.6-7.fc28.x86_64
xorg-x11-drv-openchrome-0.6.0-4.fc28.x86_64