You like Mate; I thought I saw a few of you say this.
That’s fine; I’m glad our ecosystem has many diverse choices to provide features for the diverse people who use them!
Since Mate is not something I use, I would be interested in finding out more about the reasons each of you like it; feel free to share as many details as you wish; the more the merrier!
I’m interested in understanding yet another choice in our rich software collection!
Hi @Brian_Masinick,
You wrote:
You will find some answers in this topic:
But I am convinced that some MATE users have even more to tell and I hope they join in 
Hi guys, I just fumbled my way around breaking this out into its own topic.
I think it’s a great question and deservers more visibility. It will also ensure that this isn’t a side-topic drift but the main topic it deserves.
For me personally, I recently chose to switch from GNOME and I3 to XFCE on both desktop and PC maybe for similar reasons as MATE users. Maybe?..
I really want the desktop out of the way, I don’t want endless getting-started config/tweaking (i3/Sway), nor to I want the system to be sluggish (GNOME).
Actually working on an article about how important this decision is especially on most laptops.
But we do indeed have a wide range of preferences in our community. So as @Brian_Masinick said it would be enlightening to hear the reasons everyone went with their specific choice(s) of DE or WM.
Yes, almost certainly for the same reasons. I also really want the desktop out of the way nor do I want the system to be sluggish.
One of the many beautiful MATE tweaks is to easily switch compositing on/off on demand (on the fly). Disabeling hardware acceleration is sometimes a good to workaround for GNOME40-renderbugs:
for apps written in flutter not using clutter not running on mutter resulting in stutter. 
It also helps to lower the use of GPU memory
(when I need a lot of VRAM for other tasks).
( EDIT: Why VRAM Can Ruin Your Linux Desktop Experience on Thin and Light Laptops )
Another reason: I don’t think my laptop would fly and shine as much if I would use one of the popular heavyweight desktops. (It would crawl and crash instead)
I like the classic desktop. I find Mate rock solid. Mate is easy to configure to my likes and needs. I haven’t found any other desktop I like better. I hate gnome3. KDE is to bloated. Xfce is weird to configure. Cinnamon’s applets suck in my opinion.
Now I will admit as a long time user of Mate I haven’t tried any of those other in at least a decade except gnome3.
On the contrary; to me, XFCE gives you more options on the config side, more control, more things to change and adapt to your tastes and needs, even more than MATE.
I’ve been a Xubuntu user for most of my Linux life (since 8.04), and MATE is my other favorite because of its simplicity, despite their differences. In the end, it’s a matter of tastes and how comfortable we feel with our system and DE. 
I’ve “fiddled” with other DEs from time to time but not enough to have a well informed opinion.
For me the reason why I like and use Mate started when Unity became the default DE for Ubuntu. When Lucid reached eol I was in limbo for a short while and when Ubuntu MATE became an official flavor I never really felt the need to dive to deeply into other flavors or distros. As an end user Mate fits my needs perfectly.
MATE is mature, the bugs are well-documented, and it rarely crashes.
In short: it’s fast, it’s familiar, and it’s rock-solid.
For me, the biggest thing is “immediate accessibility”, whether
the App launcher is on the (top) panel, or
the task’s selector box is visible on the other (bottom) panel, or
that a different task-oriented windows layout is waiting for me, each on a dedicated Workspace,
I am only 1 click from the action I want, with NO delay, because I have turned off ALL animation. While “pretty” and “entertaining”, for me, animation is a time-consuming “video delay”, making me wait before getting to getting to my desired destination “state”.
So, MATE, call it “Classic” or “Traditional” or “Ancient history”, it is still the most functional of desktop … and NOTHING beats functionality!
Ah but I am that casual user, I don’t know the command line configurations at all.
That means nothing to me.
Same as I am.
Me neither.
uptime tells you
A load of 1.0 on a single-core system means the CPU is perfectly utilized. On a 4-core system, a load of 4.0 represents 100% utilization.
I might be wrong, Pavlos, but I think he was pointing out that his system was indeed an intermittent use machine, not a non-stop running host left powered up at all times. I don’t think he wanted an explanation of the command!
@jymm wrote, that means nothing to me. @claudiodc wrote, me neither.
I’m glad to see that we have plenty of diversity here and that despite our different preferences and different approaches we each have environments that are useful to us. Thanks to all who shared their interests in Mate and the other environments identified.