[Discuss] MATE

[tmetro+blu at gmail.com (Tom Metro)]

John Abreau wrote:
> Mate looked promising; it would have been my preferred choice...

I've written about MATE here before, and briefly evaluated it.

I don't quite get why someone would prefer it. Both MATE and Cinnamon
have the same objective - provide a GNOME 2-like environment. The big
difference is that MATE is built on a GNOME 2 fork, and Cinnamon uses
GNOME 3 code.

Initially, MATE made more sense, as it required less work to get
something into a usable state. But Cinnamon has since caught up, to some
extent. It still feels unfinished, but it is usable. I think most power
users are better off making the jump to Cinnamon and providing developer
feedback for it, rather than further perpetuating the GNOME 2 code base.

But this opinion is largely based on the assumption that newer is
better. That GNOME 3, despite what stupidity might be happing with the
core developers at the UI layer, underlying architecture is improved.
That could certainly be a bad assumption, and I'd welcome references to
material that supports or refutes it.

The other argument in favor of MATE would be concern that Cinnamon won't
attract enough developers to keep progressing forward a GNOME 3 fork,
given the way the upstream developers clearly doesn't want to be
cooperative. My guess is that MATE can be sustained with fewer
resources, although it'll likely remain fairly static.

What is Mint using as their default desktop these days? If it is still
MATE, will it be Cinnamon in the next release? Their choice should be a
good indicator of their opinion of how ready they think Cinnamon is, and
which they see as the future direction.

 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/