desktop even still a viable choice anymore? Would like to put it on my 
install, but like man their blog does not even mention the most "recent" version. Just wondering if I would be better off just going the 
route.
@rain MATE is still my preferred environment when I need one, though I usually substitute awesome for the window manager. 1.28 is the latest development release but even the latest Ubuntu-deriviative distros still just package updates on the 1.26 branch iirc; it's confusing but they just don't seem to publicize those or feature them in the blog