Mate vs Cinnamon

[AZgl1800]

I am a Cinnamon diehard, has to do with being forced to support Windows GUI desktops for as long as there has been a GUI from Microsoft.

today, I downloaded 19.3 Mate and after USB Writer made a nice ISB thumb drive for it,
booted up on the Mate to Live Session.

Messed around a little bit, and to me, it seems/feels like it is unfinished.

Menu is sparce.

First thing I tried was Menu/Display and it crashed.

that ended my experiment, as I had to use the Power Button to turn off the laptop

Code: Select all

john@john-TUF-Gaming-FX705GM-FX705GM:~$ inxi -F
System:    Host: john-TUF-Gaming-FX705GM-FX705GM Kernel: 5.3.0-24-generic x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: Cinnamon 4.4.6 
           Distro: Linux Mint 19.3 Tricia 
Machine:   Type: Laptop System: ASUSTeK product: TUF Gaming FX705GM_FX705GM v: 1.0 serial: <root required> 
           Mobo: ASUSTeK model: FX705GM v: 1.0 serial: <root required> UEFI: American Megatrends v: FX705GM.301 
           date: 09/21/2018 

[majpooper]

I feel the same way as you do RE: Mate vs Cinnamon and in my particular case saw no real performance improvement with Mate. That said it really comes down to individual preference and what you are used to which is why so many people have such a hard time switching from Windows to Linux I suppose. There are many Mate fans that have more than enough CPU and RAM to easily run Cinnamon with no performance impact that would never switch - I personally know a couple, so . . .

[JoeBingo]

Stick with Cinnamon then. I prefer Mate. Tried Cinnamon a couple of times over the years but been a good long while. Cinnamon just wasn't as stable as Mate was for me at the time. Besides, I came from XP and Mate seemed to be a great replacement. Maybe Mate doesn't "glitter and pop", maybe seems plain and unfinished ... to you. Works just wonderful and is rock solid for me and always has been. It's Linux Mint, not Windows and all the fluff, and I'm okay with that. YMMV.

[Portreve]

I've briefly touched Gnome 1.x, and somewhat more significantly used 2.x, then Mate and eventually Cinnamon, and I have always felt, as a long-time Mac user, that no GUI platform had been more Mac OS / Mac OS X-like than Gnome and its derivatives, and if all of them, none moreso than Cinnamon.

I've recently converted an old friend of mine who's also a long time Mac user, like me, to LM Cinnamon, and his reaction to it was amazement how comfortable it felt, and where there were some differences, why in the world hasn't Apple built them into Finder.

I've tried customizing it with different themes, and I've played with many different icon sets, but to me, the default UI with the Mint X Aqua icon set is what I always go back to. Everything else either looks cheap and amateurish, or it's trying too hard to be gee-whiz-cool, or just has to edges in some way.

[gm10]

There are many Mate fans that have more than enough CPU and RAM to easily run Cinnamon with no performance impact that would never switch - I personally know a couple, so . . .

Basically. It's mainly the workflow - things are mostly where I expect them to be, unlike with Cinnamon, where I always feel annoyed having to navigate through additional windows and menus. The lower footprint is a bonus but with recent Cinnamon improvements is not all that relevant anymore. Also I appreciate being able to switch window managers and compositors depending on the task.

I'm not running Mint's MATE though but the latest development version of MATE with Compiz reloaded, both automatically compiled from source weekly, the former with a few customizations, and with my own forked version of mintmenu (see my sig) and the menu editor (also see my sig, but with my changes now also in official MATE (not Mint's version)).

[kukamuumuka]

There are many Mate fans that have more than enough CPU and RAM to easily run Cinnamon with no performance impact that would never switch - I personally know a couple, so . . .

Basically. It's mainly the workflow - things are mostly where I expect them to be, unlike with Cinnamon, where I always feel annoyed having to navigate through additional windows and menus. The lower footprint is a bonus but with recent Cinnamon improvements is not all that relevant anymore. Also I appreciate being able to switch window managers and compositors depending on the task.

+1

I use Mate too, because it is almost perfect.

[AZgl1800]

I should have mentioned in my 1st OP post,
even though I posted what my laptop is, that didn't give the specs.

it has 16 gB RAM, and super fast video, and cpu.

https://www.asus.com/us/Laptops/ASUS-TUF-Gaming-FX705/

So, no matter what I ask it to do, it just "happens now"...

I like the default theme in 19.3 Cinnamon, have played with some of the others.
In 18.3 I had to change to one of the alternate themes that didn't glare into my eyeballs so bad.

That occurred after I was the recipient of Cataract eye surgery, which turned the world from a hazy glaze, to a crystal clear non-tinted glare.

I use Redshift all the time in Night Mode, and the screen brightness at minimum.

I have another ASUS TUF machine that is 10 years old, think I will install Mate on that one and explore what the differences are side by side.

I appreciate everyone's comments, please continue to give a more rounded picture of MATE.

Code: Select all

 inxi -F
System:    Host: john-TUF-Gaming-FX705GM-FX705GM Kernel: 5.3.0-24-generic x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: Cinnamon 4.4.6 
           Distro: Linux Mint 19.3 Tricia 
Machine:   Type: Laptop System: ASUSTeK product: TUF Gaming FX705GM_FX705GM v: 1.0 serial: <root required> 
           Mobo: ASUSTeK model: FX705GM v: 1.0 serial: <root required> UEFI: American Megatrends v: FX705GM.301 
           date: 09/21/2018 
Battery:   ID-1: BAT0 charge: 58.1 Wh condition: 59.5/64.1 Wh (93%) 
CPU:       Topology: 6-Core model: Intel Core i7-8750H bits: 64 type: MT MCP L2 cache: 9216 KiB 
           Speed: 2324 MHz min/max: 800/4100 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1181 2: 1263 3: 869 4: 1259 5: 1275 6: 1638 
           7: 1044 8: 1217 9: 1273 10: 1255 11: 1393 12: 1266 
Graphics:  Device-1: Intel driver: i915 v: kernel 
           Device-2: NVIDIA GP106M [GeForce GTX 1060 Mobile] driver: nvidia v: 435.21 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.4 driver: modesetting,nvidia unloaded: fbdev,nouveau,vesa 
           resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: GeForce GTX 1060/PCIe/SSE2 v: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 435.21 
Audio:     Device-1: Intel Cannon Lake PCH cAVS driver: snd_hda_intel 
           Device-2: NVIDIA GP106 High Definition Audio driver: snd_hda_intel 
           Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.3.0-24-generic 
Network:   Device-1: Intel Wireless-AC 9560 [Jefferson Peak] driver: iwlwifi 
           IF: wlo1 state: up mac: b4:69:21:c6:ba:97 
           Device-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet driver: r8169 
           IF: enp2s0 state: down mac: 04:92:26:09:82:4c 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 111.79 GiB used: 20.91 GiB (18.7%) 
           ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: HP model: SSD S600 120GB size: 111.79 GiB 
RAID:      Hardware-1: Intel 82801 Mobile SATA Controller [RAID mode] driver: ahci 
Partition: ID-1: / size: 109.04 GiB used: 20.90 GiB (19.2%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 42.0 C mobo: N/A gpu: nvidia temp: 41 C 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): cpu: 0 
Info:      Processes: 299 Uptime: 6h 32m Memory: 15.49 GiB used: 1.78 GiB (11.5%) Shell: bash inxi: 3.0.32 

[majpooper]

Basically. It's mainly the workflow - things are mostly where I expect them to be . . . .

This I think nails it - we get comfortable with what we are familiar with.

[tenfoot]

I agree with you majpooper When Gnome 2 bit the dust I went to the first alternative (forget what is was called) and then gravitated to Mate when it was released. I have installed Cinnamon on almost every version of Linux Mint but after playing with it and desperately trying to like it sufficiently to make it my daily driver, I've given up and gone make to Mate. It is so intuitive and configurable that it leaves everything else lacking, in my opinion.

[Moem]

we get comfortable with what we are familiar with.

That's exactly right. I use Cinnamon, and I love it, but if for some reason I'd first have installed another DE, I would probably love that by now, too. Let's face it, Mint is pretty fine in each of its available versions.

[BigEasy]

today, I downloaded 19.3 Mate and after USB Writer made a nice ISB thumb drive for it,
booted up on the Mate to Live Session.
Messed around a little bit, and to me, it seems/feels like it is unfinished.
Menu is sparce.
First thing I tried was Menu/Display and it crashed.
that ended my experiment, as I had to use the Power Button to turn off the laptop

Somethihg clicked once+something crashed once+something immediately turned off = new unheard cool story on Linux forum.

[AZgl1800]

today, I downloaded 19.3 Mate and after USB Writer made a nice ISB thumb drive for it,
booted up on the Mate to Live Session.
Messed around a little bit, and to me, it seems/feels like it is unfinished.
Menu is sparce.
First thing I tried was Menu/Display and it crashed.
that ended my experiment, as I had to use the Power Button to turn off the laptop

Somethihg clicked once+something crashed once+something immediately turned off = new unheard cool story on Linux forum.

But further down the thread, I also said I have a spare laptop, that once the holiday madness is behind me, I will put MATE on it, and run them side by side.... that is not an unheard of story...
this laptop that I am using right now, is state-of-art hardware, and 19.3 is the first ever Distro of any flavor that would boot to Live Session on it....

The other laptop, is the same toy, but 10 years older, I would expect that it will boot up perfect and run just fine.

[Benedetto]

I kicked off, with Linux Mint Cinnamon when it was 17.something. I always upgraded all new versions as they were released (not beta). For a year or so I ran dual boot with W10, however apart from updating W10 on a weekly basis I never used W10. I re-installed version 19.1 from a DVD and ditched the W10 allocating all the disk to Linux.
A couple of months ago I purchased a set of DVD's: Cinnamon 19.2 Tina, MATE 19.2 and xfce 19.2. There were two other DVD's (LMDE3 and Ubuntu 19.10) which I did not try out. I tried MATE and XFCE out of curiosity, but liked MATE but not XFCE (too like XP which was old news for me). I decided that as my disk has lots of room, 500GB, 467GB free, desktop and laptop descriptions very similar (the laptop is a virtual clone of the desktop), to install MATE.
The MATE installation went fine and I found that I was not asked to assign any partition to it on my desktop. I can choose, by Login - on or off - which to one to use rather than choosing when booting. I do tend to prefer and use MATE rather than Cinnamon, but I always do any updating using Cinnamon. For the most part it works for both, but there are one or two MATE only updates which I have had to do on occasions.
When the same procedure was done with my SONY VAIO laptop I was asked to partition but declined opting for the same outcome I had on the desktop. I am not sure whether partitioning would have been a better option or not, however, my demands and requirements on my pcs are limited and no issues have resulted from the way I did it.
Subsequent upgrading to 19.3, using Cinnamon, went just fine and most of MATE was also upgraded. Just a couple of small, but specific MATE upgrades were needed.
I cannot give a reason for my MATE preference, I just seem to like it, probably because it appears - and probably is - more simple to use.

[danielson]

MATE deserves a bit more attention.

After drifting over from so many distros, was pleasantly surprised by MATE's capabilities!

It is among the most quiet on my noisy old HP laptop.
Solus and MX are probably next in line with regards to that point.

Not as sophisticated as Cinnamon but simplicity MATE offers is good.

As a practical newbie to MATE, it would be good to have a sticky thread for tips and tweaks here.

[AndyMH]

I am a Cinnamon diehard

Likewise, started using mint with cinnamon and have stuck with it. I know where everything is. Tried mate and xcfe, didn't like them - because I'm a luddite, get used to something and don't like change.

[kukamuumuka]

I suppose that people who are used linux based systems for a long time, are liking Mate more, and them who are not used so long time, are more familiar with Cinnamon, because Mint invest in Cinnamon's marketing.

[gm10]

I suppose that people who are used linux based systems for a long time, are liking Mate more, and them who are not used so long time, are more familiar with Cinnamon, because Mint invest in Cinnamon's marketing.

Mint used to market (and develop) MATE, but no more. Personally I have used Openbox for longer than I have used MATE (still do sometimes), to me that's the "classic" Linux desktop, and it's very different from MATE/GNOME 2.

[cliffcoggin]

Mint Cinnamon was my first Linux after leaving Windows. It has worked so well I really can't summon enough interest to consider an alternative. Like any other tool, as long as it does the job I shan't change it.

[Pjotr]

I suppose that people who are used linux based systems for a long time, are liking Mate more, and them who are not used so long time, are more familiar with Cinnamon, because Mint invest in Cinnamon's marketing.

Full-time Linux desktop user since 2006 (the magnificent Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Dapper Drake), but I prefer Cinnamon for modern machines (and Xfce for older rigs).

[LanceM]

I ran Mate for several years. I switched to Cinnamon on the 18. I like Cinnamon much better plus to me it seems better supported. My next choice is Xfce. Mate for me is bottom rung.