Cinnamon Vs. MATE

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domba21

Cinnamon Vs. MATE

Post by domba21 »

What are the major differences between those two? I looked at Youtube about the comparison side by side and all I knew that MATE is lighter (use less resource) and looks slightly uglier, but has the same menu as cinnamon. The Cinnamon is more eye candy, but MATE is more stable. I'm newbie here. Can anyone point out the differences? Thanks.
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kc1di
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Re: Cinnamon Vs. MATE

Post by kc1di »

Hello domba21 and Welcome to Linux Mint Forums,
Good to have you here :)

Linux Mint strives to make all their desktops look and feel as similar to each other as possible. So changing form Mate to XFCE to Cinnamon you will see pretty much the same Desktop layout on each version. With that said. Mate is a continuation of the old Gnome 2x desktop which was the favorite DE of many users before Gnome 3x was introduced. It continued to be based on GTK2 libs. and has just recently been or may still be in the process of changing to GTK3 Libs. It is a bit faster than Cinnamon DE. and a bit less resource intensive. It is a good match for older equipment. Cinnamon on the other hand was developed mostly by the Mint team in response to Gnome 3x release, It purpose was to build a traditional desktop on top of Gnome 3's base. Gnome 3x was a radical change in the Desktop and a lot of folks didn't care for it. Thus Cinnamon was born to take advantage ofI Gnome 3's newer development base but keep the traditional desktop alive. It caught on and may users liked it and switched from gnome3 centric Distros to Cinnamon distros. Cinnamon is slightly more resource intensive and was developed more for newer equipment than older and is a good Choice if you have a computer that will run it. It offers more eye candy and other benefits but is conservative in it's approach to the Desktop.

Try them both from the live media a see which one works best for you and your equipment. While your at it you may as well try XFCE version also, XFCE is good stable easily customizable DE that Just keeps you working without drastic changes. Updates to XFCE come quite slowly and are usually very stable not changing much in the desktop itself over time Thus once you learn it your good for a long time.

Which one is best for you. That depends on your equipment and personal tastes, But one thing that is good about all the desktops is you have a choice in Linux which you do not have it with other OS systems.

I have chosen Cinnamon currently on this machine, I have other machines running Mate and Xfce all of them get the work done. and I enjoy them all.
(Note: The Above is my personal observation and other may see things differently.)
I didn't mention KDE - Which is also a fine DE and offers many user customization, but may be a little challenging to newer ops. Mint will drop it's KDE version after Mint 19 is released. For reasons explained Here: https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3418

Have fun as you make your choices. and Enjoy the Distro and Forum.
Easy tips : https://easylinuxtipsproject.blogspot.com/ Pjotr's Great Linux projects page.
Linux Mint Installation Guide: http://linuxmint-installation-guide.rea ... en/latest/
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