Why is MATE being kept alive?

[tdockery97]

According to the Mint repositories, "The MATE Desktop Environment [is] a non-intuitive and unattractive desktop for users"

I think that it is meant as a facetious statement, same as the "warning" that comes with the very stable CrunchBang distribution.

[lexon]

I use Mate. I have always loved the clean desktop. I do not need eye candy.
The OP never came back. I suspect he was just trolling.

L

[Trapper]

I see no point in continuing MATE which is based on discontinued Gnome 2. Why not use XFCE which is very much alive and similar?

Probably for the exact same reasons many people previously decided to use Gnome 2 over XFCE.

Gnome 2 is dead by name, not by functionality. Until someone develops something that 'reasonably' replaces Gnome 2 many, many people will use MATE. Those people don't even view Cinnamon as a viable replacement for Gnome 2.

[yonnie]

Mate has come a long way in the last year. It is intuitive, windows users feel right at home and it has everything right at your finger tips or mouse click. It's fast and productive which is a lot more than can be said for many other DEs. Mate is my preferred desktop and I hope it sticks around for a long time to come!

[joez]

I can't believe this thread still has life. If you don't like the Mate Desktop simply don't use it. Mate continues to be kept alive because there are a large number who DO like it. It would appear there are many other Desktops that remain alive who have much fewer people using them than Mate, should they also be done away with? I, and all my friends really like the Mate Desktop, and while Cinnamon may come closest to being a viable replacement, it will not run on all of our computers, so Mate fills a need more succinctly than any of the other Desktop choices we examined.

Gnome 2 is dead, long live Mate.

[Catbuntu]

I can't believe this thread still has life. If you don't like the Mate Desktop simply don't use it. Mate continues to be kept alive because there are a large number who DO like it. It would appear there are many other Desktops that remain alive who have much fewer people using them than Mate, should they also be done away with? I, and all my friends really like the Mate Desktop, and while Cinnamon may come closest to being a viable replacement, it will not run on all of our computers, so Mate fills a need more succinctly than any of the other Desktop choices we examined.

Gnome 2 is dead, long live Mate.

+1

MATE is being kept alive because users still want it. I still want it. Mint would do as some other distributions and will happily drop what their users use, I hope!
The real freedom is the choice. Even if just a few users want MATE, why not let them use it? Also, in the recently closed poll, MATE was the second preferred desktop environment, after Cinnamon. I also like Cinnamon and I think it's a huge work, but just because I don't use it I don't think it's «stupid» to keep it alive.
Long live Mate, indeed!

Cat

[AnonKS]

Cinnamon is by far my favorite. But MATE is also a VERY nice DE. If it weren't for cinnamon, I would definitely use MATE exclusively.
I tried Fedora 17 with gnome 3 and I found it to be a steaming pile. Unity is even worse.
I run Lubuntu 12.04 on my PowerBook G4 because of the light-weight lxde, but I can't stand that desktop. Haven't found a suitable PPC distro running MATE yet though.

[dee.]

Cinnamon is by far my favorite. But MATE is also a VERY nice DE. If it weren't for cinnamon, I would definitely use MATE exclusively.

Me too, except I could go either way between MATE / LXDE. I think they're very similar desktops.

[joez]

I would say the question has been answered quite soundly, and should be put to rest.

[xenopeek]

Agreed, time to wrap it up. Linux Mint comes with Cinnamon, MATE, Xfce and KDE, as these are (in order) the favorite four desktop environments within our community (see last year's poll). OP's original concern was for there not being a Xfce release of Linux Mint 13, while there was a MATE release (and OP preferred Xfce over MATE). That was just timing and misunderstanding, as the Xfce and KDE releases were to be completed sometime after the Cinnamon and MATE releases had already been available.

Locked.