I just installed kdevelop on linux. I'm trying to figure it out. The build button is greyed out and I can't figure out how to compile and run. Do I need cmake? Also you may have to dumb it down for me. lol. Thanks
Most don't come "ready to develop code" out of the box. You have to install a bunch of compilers and tools yourself, using whatever package manager you have.
"MATE" is a desktop environment, not a distribution.
They want to know are you running Debian? Fedora? Arch? Etc.?
Maybe just post the output of uname -a