Getting rid of the shadows in MATE

[bin-linux]

I'm afraid I have never ever been a fan of shadow text and window shadows on desktops.
Some DEs you can be rid of them, some you can't

Now, I quite like MATE, more so since 1.26 came out - hopefully 1.28 will land soon.

In order to enjoy 1.26 you need to be on Bookworm - a simple upgrade from Bullseye following the instructions provided I found that you can change Testing to Bookworm quite happily as we're now so close to release.

Getting rid of the shadows on desktop icon text just needs:-

.caja-desktop.caja-canvas-item {
color: #000000;
text-shadow: none;
}

added to the bottom of your ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css - this also works in MATE 1.24

Getting rid of the window shadows in 1.26 can be done by installing picom and compton compositors. Use mate-tweak to change compositor to picom-Hybrid and logout/in. No more window shadows.