Polo: a new Wayland compisitor for MATE

MATE, which has remained one of the last major desktop environments exclusively using X11, is now embracing Wayland through Polo. The new project serves as a window manager, compositor, and session authority for MATE's Wayland implementation, gradually replacing Marco, mate-session-manager, and compositor components of mate-settings-daemon that previously operated on X11.

Built on libweston and written in Vala and C, Polo aims to maintain MATE's familiar behavior while modernizing its underlying technology. Söke has made the first version available on GitHub, explicitly seeking testers to help refine the nascent software.

The transition to Wayland represents a significant technical shift for MATE, promising potential improvements in performance, security, and modern graphics capabilities. Polo's development marks an important milestone in MATE's evolution to remain competitive with other desktop environments that have already adopted Wayland.