Awesome Show archive.org snapshot is a very good tiling window manager that provides neat features like automatic layouting of windows, good multi-display support with per display workspaces and more. Since it is only a window manager, you will probably miss some of MATE's conveniences like the network manager, application menus, automatic updates etc.

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Fortunately, you can run Awesome within MATE, by following these steps (tested on Ubuntu MATE 16.04):

Awesome + MATE

• Create the following file at /usr/share/xsessions/Xsession.desktop:

  [Desktop Entry]
  Encoding=UTF-8
  Name=Awesome + MATE
  Comment=Awesome + MATE
  Exec=/etc/X11/Xsession
  

• Create the following file at ~/.xsession

  #!/bin/sh
  mate-session &
  awesome
  

• Sign out, then choose "Awesome + Mate" clicking on the little cog in the upper right corner.

• I suggest, you remove the MATE panel at the bottom, remove the notification area from the one at the top, go to "Properties", and uncheck "Expand".

• You can disable the desktop icons in Control Panel -> Look and Feel -> MATE Tweaks

Gnome-Keyring for SSH

I was having issues using the gnome-keyring daemon for SSH. To fix this, the following seems to work:

• Comment out the use-ssh-agent line in /etc/X11/Xsession.options.

• Change your ~/.xsession to this:

  #!/bin/sh
  eval $(/usr/bin/gnome-keyring-daemon)
  export SSH_AUTH_SOCK
  mate-session &
  awesome