Am I being fair to MATE here?

MATE Desktop
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I would rather MATE users correct me now, than later.

Am I being fair to MATE here?:

Feedback welcomed.

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Weekly Forum Summary
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Well, that looks to be fair.
At the same time according to my personal experience with remote access, Mate is not worse or better compared with other DE’s.

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I don’t know about the Budgie desktop, but I might have included KDE in like desktops, just that it is a more bloated desktop.

Considerations:
Visually plain by modern standards without theming effort.
X11-based; Wayland support remains work in progress.
Feature development is preservation-minded, not ambitious.

I consider those exactly the reason I love the MATE desktop! MATE is a CLASSIC!

Edit: I meant:
I have yet to see any real improvement on other Desktops.
I have seen a lot of change for the sake of change.

Sometimes my thinking gets ahead of my typing fingers.

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I never used MATE desktop. Looks a bit like Cinnamon. Don’t know if I’ll ever use this desktop. :thinking:

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That is your choice, choice is what makes Linux great. If you use Windows or Apple you WILL use the desktop they give you.

Both are a response to the end of gnome 2, but they chose different paths. Cinnamon is built on gnome3 while MATE is a fork of gnome2. While they look similar they are different, especially the applets and the way the desktops work.

Cinnamon is built on GNOME technologies but is an independent desktop environment that no longer requires GNOME as a dependency. It was originally based on GNOME 3, but has since evolved into its own distinct environment.

MATE was created as a continuation/fork of the GNOME 2 desktop. It was made to preserve the GNOME 2 look-and-feel and reuse much of its codebase, after many GNOME 2 components were replaced when the GNOME 3 project moved in a different direction.

  • MATE is often described as faster/lighter and more traditional.
  • Cinnamon is often described as full-featured, typically a bit heavier.

Cinnamon is strongly oriented around Cinnamon-specific extensions/applets and theme-style customization.
MATE customization is more traditional and tends to rely on its settings tools plus its panel/session approach.

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Thank you so much for the explanation! Didn’t know this. :folded_hands:

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the article is fine, well written, no fluff.

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Pretty straight forward article. Lists all the reasons why I use Mate and will continue to do so.

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Hayden, I guess what you were worried people might think would be criticisms of MATE turns out to be exactly why people love MATE. LOL

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@Jymm and others. Indeed! Initially I had that heading as Weaknesses. :melting_face: I missed out on some heat by nameing it “Considerations” instead lol. :relieved_face:

So its Strengths vs. Considerations for all distros and DEs. I was even thinking of:

Positive considerations
and
Negative considerations

:expressionless_face:

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Love the article! I think the strengths, considerations, and descriptions are a very fair representation of MATE.

I wasn’t around when GNOME 2 was a thing so it seems interesting to me that GNOME 3 rattled the Linux world so much, but makes sense given how different the workflows were between the two. There were many new desktop environments (DEs) created due to this change, it seems.

Something I have learned after spending a significant amount of time on Unity is that it is a difficult DE to theme. MATE still really holds that personalisation aspect well and you can really make it your own. @hydn represented that well on another article :slight_smile: .

To answer the question: More than fair about MATE :mate:

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SO I use MATE for the reason it is a fork of GNOME2, I hate GNOME3 I think they could of thought of a better setup and user interface in GNOME3. I think your review of MATE is fair and explains why someone should use it.

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