Almost 12 months have gone by and I've finally had time to update my Mame front end pfeMame. Some pretty major changes (see the full changelog) - summary as follows;
Huge speed boost to the games database refreshing
Updated some of the windows to have scrollable content to better fit on the screen (e.g. game categories)
Added support for systems (e.g. ZX Spectrum) now that Mame and Mess have been combined. Make sure you read the pfeMame manual on how to support the systems.
Other various code improvements and bug fixes
As of this version, with the inclusion of systems support, you will need to use a catver.ini that includes the systems. Do an internet search for catver_full.ini.
For various reasons I have had to move my development platform to Windows. As such there is no longer a pre-compiled Linux version. Maybe I'll get some time to look at this in the future.