Thanks for all the suggestions about getting Ubuntu MATE to recognise other nodes on my network using the .local hostname as well as just the IP address.
A number of Avahi-related packages are missing from Ubuntu MATE (14.10) compared with other flavours in which .local hostnames are recognised out of the box: gnome-user-share libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libmono-zeroconf1.0-cil avahi-discover avahi-dnsconfd Clearly the absence of each and every one of these packages can't have been equally to blame, and several of them bring quite a few dependencies across with them. However, installing them all got everything working properly. Thanks again. Nige -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/