Mate is the best desktop ever out

[Brahim]

Through my experience with Linux, I came to the conclusion that no DE compares to Mate in terms of practicality, flexibility, compatibility, elegance and speed. It's quite rare to find such combination in one DE, not even the classic gnome 2 and Cinnamon. And I think Linux Mint should give it more development time. What do you think guys?

[xenopeek]

Through my experience with Linux, I came to the conclusion that no DE compares to Cinnamon in terms of practicality, flexibility, compatibility, elegance and speed. It's quite rare to find such combination in one DE, not even the classic gnome 2 and MATE. And I think Linux Mint should give it more development time. What do you think guys?

In other words, this is rather subjective

[Zalbor]

KDE is obviously objectively the best and the reason Mint focuses more on Cinnamon and Mate is a conspiracy.

But yeah, subjective. :p

[rajuvembala]

I think cinnamon brought the usability of windows environment to linux so my vote goes to cinnamon
(very subjective )

[Brahim]

Through my experience with Linux, I came to the conclusion that no DE compares to Cinnamon in terms of practicality, flexibility, compatibility, elegance and speed. It's quite rare to find such combination in one DE, not even the classic gnome 2 and MATE. And I think Linux Mint should give it more development time. What do you think guys?

In other words, this is rather subjective

I'm runnig a dual-boot of Linux Mint 14 Mate and Linux Mint 14 Cinnamon on My Dell Inspiron i3 and Mate is faster than Cinnamon though it has compiz running and plenty of software installed. Cinnamon on Mint 14 is not what it used to be. It's clunky and keeps freezing on me and had issues with keyboard and mouse. Mate on the opposite has inherited the robustness of the long-established gnome 2 with plenty of eyecandy from compiz. And I have to admit I'm not for the idea of making Cinnamon mainstream and probably would agree on that if it can maintain the flexibility and versatility of the classical Linux DE's. For instance, I see no reason for not importing compiz effects to Cinnamon. compiz-fusion-plugins-extra for instance has been removed from Ubuntu repo. and this is where Mint should take the lead and create these animation addons, or similar ones, for Cinnamon and live up to its name as the keeper of old ways and maintainer of user-friendliness. I spoke to many Linux developers and they seem to share my worries for Cinnamon's future. In this venue; Mint developers should be proactive

[Brahim]

I think cinnamon brought the usability of windows environment to linux so my vote goes to cinnamon
(very subjective )

Linux is not Windows. and it's not true that Windows is more usable than Linux. In fact, things are totally the other way around. Windows has illegally forced computer manufacturer to ship their products with Windows preinstalled and things are going the opposite direction for it now and Linux is growing even faster, take the latest steam staistics for instance. In this vebue, I'd say the future is for Linux and not Windows or Mac. And narrowing the issue back to DE's, i do agree with you that Cinnamon is practical and stable and but I think it's boring when it comes to eycandy and when compared to compiz-compatible DE's like Mate (but not Unity )

[xenopeek]

Use whatever works best for you As with a lot of things, your experience may be influenced a lot by your hardware. On my hardware using MATE feels slower and laggier when compared with Cinnamon, KDE or Xfce. Even without Compiz, MATE uses more memory after boot than Cinnamon. On your hardware it may be different. But let's see what MATE 1.6 brings I was happy to read about the MATE University thing, that seems to be much needed: http://mate-desktop.org/2013/03/12/mate-university/

As for Compiz, the Compiz maintainer has already said he will not cooperate on porting Compiz to Wayland (or any other X.org replacement). With Canonical also dropping Compiz, I think it is a deadite and doesn't have any future left.

[Brahim]

I read on this forum http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=217&t=114613 that the Mate community have forked their own Mate Why doesn't Linux Mint support this project?

[Adelante]

I'm happy with Cinnamon and MATE is a meh

[caf4926]

I use Mint 13 Mate on a eeepc
It is the best performing of everything I have tried + It looks so good too + everything just works.

It gets 10/10 from me

[HardyH]

So, tested both, Cinnamon and MATE and came to the conclusion that MATE works much much better and, what's most important for me,is nuch more stable. After one week with Cinnamon on a fresh Mint 14 install on a physical harddisk, I made the following experiences:

Configurability:
Cinnamon is very complicated to configure and to modify, downloading extentions etc. and unpacking them somewhere manually and restarting the desktop is so old fashioned but maybe due to the completely borked Gnome Shell that is used as base for Cinnamon. To make all configurations I wanted, I had to look in 3 different places, dconf, cinnamon config, gnome tweak tool, that is a stauts taht I would cal subsuboptimal. Cross GTK version theming also is a big problem, GTK+2 applications look different than GTK+3 applications, and I haven't found a way yet to set a GTK+2 theme that really works in Cinnamon with GTK+2 applications. Panel/Desktop configuration in MATE usually is right click teh desktop or panel and select teh option you want, that's fast, easy and sane.

Stability:
Cinnamon freezes a couple of times a day, in 90% of these cases, it is sufficient to restart cinnamon, but it causes complete system freezes at least 2 times a day, where i had to pull the power plug from my machine and power it up again. This is a no go for productivity systems and disqualifies Cinnamon for me completely. Under MATE, my DE never freezes or locks up the whole system.

My conclusion:
Cinnamon looks great, very polished, but it suffers from the instable GTK+3 and insane Gnome Shell base it uses, you can chrome plate crap and give it a shiny polished look, but stilll, it stays crap under the shiny surface.

My DE is MATE, best DE out there for non mobile productivity systems, but this may change if MATE gets ported to GTK+3.x, as GTK+3.x means trouble and infects your system with a lot of Gnome 3 badware.
Systems: Mit 14 64 bit MATE on a separate HDD, Mint 14 64 Bit Cinnamon on a different separate HDD, both on a AMD FX8350 powered 16 GB RAM System using a nVidia 580 GTX 3GB with proprietary driver.

H.

[xenopeek]

Stability:
Cinnamon freezes a couple of times a day, in 90% of these cases, it is sufficient to restart cinnamon, but it causes complete system freezes at least 2 times a day, where i had to pull the power plug from my machine and power it up again. This is a no go for productivity systems and disqualifies Cinnamon for me completely. Under MATE, my DE never freezes or locks up the whole system.

Have you looked in your /var/log/syslog file? Cinnamon crashing several times per day is a symptom of something else going wrong, something you would want to fix. In my case it was a bug in the UEFI of my motherboard, which I managed to fix initially with a kernel parameter tweak and recently completely solved with a UEFI upgrade. Cinnamon doesn't crash ever now.

[Brahim]

I agree Cinnamon is very stable compared to other DE's including Unity but it is still a work in progress. While aiming for a mainstream DE, developers should think of technophiles and enthusiastic Linuxers and should consider cutting-edge aspects while developing Cinnamon., like adding more effects and making it more configurable.

[HardyH]

Stability:
Cinnamon freezes a couple of times a day, in 90% of these cases, it is sufficient to restart cinnamon, but it causes complete system freezes at least 2 times a day, where i had to pull the power plug from my machine and power it up again. This is a no go for productivity systems and disqualifies Cinnamon for me completely. Under MATE, my DE never freezes or locks up the whole system.

Have you looked in your /var/log/syslog file? Cinnamon crashing several times per day is a symptom of something else going wrong, something you would want to fix. In my case it was a bug in the UEFI of my motherboard, which I managed to fix initially with a kernel parameter tweak and recently completely solved with a UEFI upgrade. Cinnamon doesn't crash ever now.

No UEFI here, fortunately running a bios, but I will have a look at these logs, merci bien.
H.

[JWJones]

Sure, I'll bite...

Through my experience with Linux, I came to the conclusion that no DE compares to XFCE in terms of practicality, flexibility, compatibility, elegance (bwahaha!) and speed. It's quite rare to find such combination in one DE, not even Cinnamon, MATE, or KDE. And I think Linux Mint should give it more development time. What do you think guys?

[HardyH]

Sure, I'll bite...

Through my experience with Linux, I came to the conclusion that no DE compares to XFCE in terms of practicality, flexibility, compatibility, elegance (bwahaha!) and speed. It's quite rare to find such combination in one DE, not even Cinnamon, MATE, or KDE. And I think Linux Mint should give it more development time. What do you think guys?

If it would not use Thunar, I'd almost agree
H

[Brahim]

Sure, I'll bite...

Through my experience with Linux, I came to the conclusion that no DE compares to XFCE in terms of practicality, flexibility, compatibility, elegance (bwahaha!) and speed. It's quite rare to find such combination in one DE, not even Cinnamon, MATE, or KDE. And I think Linux Mint should give it more development time. What do you think guys?

[JWJones]

If it would not use Thunar, I'd almost agree

Yup, that's why I use something else, usually PCManFM.

[caf4926]

I had a friend over last night and we were messing with some html code in Dreamweaver, running in Crossover in Mint 13 Mate. I also had file manager, web browser, text editor all open and he was completely jaw dropped at the snappy/speediness of Mint.

This on my little eeepc

I love this OS

[Jose Manuel]

As you all know in this forum, I am a fan of KDE Desktop. So, as far as I am concerned the best desktop in the Linux World is KDE, without a doubt. While not the lightest, to my taste, it is the most elegant, the most consistent, the most practical and the most flexible, if you do configure very well, for my taste there whom compete with KDE.-

But, really the Mate Desktop, I think actually doing very good, (would be my second choice). It is very fast, practical, flexible and really I think it has very few errors. Undoubtedly Mate Desktop I like much more than Cinnamon. If I were to make a list according to my favorite desktops would be:

1) KDE - 2) Mate - 3) XFCE - 4) Cinnamon. Best regards.-