For those, who haven't realized, yet: MATE 1.26 has now been uploaded to Debian and should be available in Debian testing to all happy testers.
During December, me and the whole family, we had been infected with Covid-19. All of us have recovered well, by now. In fact, I was very happy about a proper fever which I haven't had in years. (Fever is a well-known form of cancer prevention / prophylaxis). Drinking a lot (of warm water!), not eating for five days, and additionally following some health practices from the natural healing context supported the recovery process really well.
The MATE 1.26 DEB package preparations had been done while sitting in bed with my hot water bottle in the back and a pot of honeyed thyme tea next to me on the window sill. Things were getting too boring while being sick, so the monotonous wrapping up of +/- 40 desktop environment DEB packages was a welcome change then (and not too complex for the reduced brain activity of mine, either).
Hope, that MATE 1.26 in Debian works well for many Debian users. I also plan to bring MATE 1.26 to bullseye-backports soon (second half of January, probably).
light+love
Mike (aka sunweaver at debian.org)