I wonder how the community would react to an addition to the existing version of the images with XFCE DE , new version with Mate DE.

Or other variants.

 

The issue arose due to the fact that collecting different images and often get from users are requests for different options that vary from the norm in the community Armbian variant of DE (ICEWM KDE LXDE LXQT etc). I tried to add a test version with a Mate. Got to add the Assembly of images with alternative DE without prejudice to the basic variant (XFCE).

Adding Mate as a build script option and default configuration tweaks is possible. But I'm not sure about adding another set of prebuilt images - we have too many boards to do it, so we have to choose one or the other.

I do not insist. The ideal - everyone gathers himself what you need. But probably it is not realistic to have a universal Assembly machine on a shared resource. As delirium. To create a minimal image for the virtual machine (e.g. VirtualBox). The user downloads a predefined image, launches it, and with one simple command runs zbrojnice, and it specifies the Assembly desired image. Receives the output of a ready image on the spot. And on the share to store only the most frequently demanded or fixed\tested current options.

The more ideal solution is providing a custom script which will install/remove required packages and set up the configuration on the existing server/desktop images, or even better - custom targets for the tasksel. We just need to make sure that DE switching works out of the box.

 

Providing a VirtualBox image for the building is possible, but it requires more effort and more time for the user to set up.