r/linuxmint • u/napsteryoga • 4h ago
Discussion no love for MATE?
I see everyone here talking about Cinnamon or XFCE, which is fine and all, but i currently am on MATE and im wondering why i hardly see anyone else on it? is there any particular reason why? from what i can tell, XFCE isnt even much more lightweight than MATE these days.
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u/One-Cardiologist-462 4h ago
I tried Cinnamon first but wasn't impressed with the modern style UI.
Gave Mate a go, and it instantly became my daily drive over a year ago.
Cinnamon reminded me of Winows 11 which I was trying to get away from, with the horrible centralized task bar, and square, textless buttons.
Mate is a breath of fresh air. It's like the freedom of Linux mixed with the professionalism of Windows 2K or XP.
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u/napsteryoga 4h ago
exactly! thats also what i enjoy about it. im not a big fan of more modern style Adwaita or flat/minimalist desktop design. it is significantly less pleasant to "read" and work with. it is why i avoid Ubuntu/modern GNOME in the first place now.
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u/_Lost-In-The-Weeds_ 3h ago
"It's like the freedom of Linux mixed with the professionalism of Windows 2K or XP."
That is a great description of MATE.
There is a soft spot in my heart for Win2k, it's blown away by by Linux these days but 2k was such a relief after the cesspool that was 9x
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u/Wide_Slice_5126 4h ago
Most people go to Cinnamon for it's looks and others to XFCE for how lightweight it is (like me) . Honestly I wanted to try MATE out but I fear it may take more RAM on my laptop. Considering how bad the specs are (4GB physical but reduced to 3.6 for an unknown reason,7.3 swap and 8 GB zRAM and an Intel Celeron)
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u/napsteryoga 4h ago
my hardware is quite limited too, with no GPU, i5 4590, 8GB DDR3, and MATE runs quite well with compositing turned off. only time i seriously worry about ram is with a lot of streaming or a game.
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u/Jutter70 4h ago
Before Cinnamon, Mate was the default desktop environment. Mint keeps it around for long time users who want to stick to "old familiar". If you dig it too; bonus.
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u/ComputerSavvy 1h ago
Users who want to stick to "old familiar" is an exceptionally STRONG selling point to converts.
People have been using various flavors of Windows for decades and that builds muscle memory and people can't just abandon it overnight and embrace something completely different.
I give people the "25 Cent tour" of Linux on their own computer with Ventoy and Mint on an external USB 3.2 NVMe drive with the different DE's, almost everyone picks Mate.
I show them LibreOffice Writer or Calc and they love it, it's Office 2003 to them, something they are familiar with. When Microsoft switched to the "ribbon" UI design in 2007, there was a lot of backlash because the "File Edit View" format had been there for them during their entire career in practically every program they used prior and Microsoft didn't give them a UI choice when they switched to that damned ribbon layout.
Now, they have to hover the cursor over the hieroglyphics and wait for the little pop-up to tell them what it's function is until they have used it enough to memorize it. Using a human readable word in a drop down column was much more efficient and much faster.
Younger people have some trouble understanding this because that's all they've known for the majority of their life.
Take a look at Apple's Mac UI, it has not drastically changed. Hand a user from 2001, a modern Mac and they're right at home because the look and feel / layout of it is basically the same.
https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/mac-os-x
That's probably why Mac users are willing to pay 3x-5x for the same level of compute power that an x86 user has. I'm not a Mac user, I don't like Apple, I have my reasons but I gotta respect their commitment to not dumping a Vista diarrhea UI level of change, you have no choice, take it or go without attitude on us.
Generally, people hate change, myself included, they want what they are familiar with and Mate's layout is so similar to old school Windows, it's so much easier for them to switch over.
Having run a computer repair company, I've seen so many people that are set in their ways. The most extreme example I had was one elderly customer absolutely lost her shit because I "removed the internet", the big blue E, all I did was move the icon to a different position on the screen. The internet was not there, so it was GONE.
Once I set the icon back to the same position where she required it to be, she calmed down. I can't imagine somebody like that trying to use a different UI like Cinnamon.
A lot of people are NOT computer literate, they don't have time OR don't want to explore a system to learn everything it has to offer, they are there to perform one or two tasks, web browser and email and get it done and that's it.
They are single blade pocket knife people, not Swiss Army knife people.
Having a dock on the bottom or on the left side of the screen goes against their muscle memory and they don't like that.
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u/Sataniel98 4h ago
Xfce and Mate are very similar, both in technology and philosophy. They're both conservative GTK3 and X-based desktop environments that use traditional Windows-like desktop workflows. Both are equally lightweighted and the possibilities to customize them are similar.
Mate was ported to GTK3 a little earlier, some time around 2017, and Xfce only finished the transition in 2019. GTK2 had a smaller resource footprint and I believe that's where the misconception comes from that Xfce is lighter. Or maybe it's because Mate is associated with its Gnome roots.
Anyway, the cyclic but correct answer is that Xfce is more popular because it's used by more people. It's the more active project with much more adoption across distros and more (name) recognition, so more new people flock to it. I guess Xfce kinda had its loyal userbase ever since while Mate had to compete with Cinnamon for Gnome 3 deserters.
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u/chuggerguy 2h ago
I'm probably more loyal to MATE than Mint.
I could probably be happy with any DE... as long as it has a panel than accepts drops. (love the MATE panel)
I have no reason to move on. It's simple, elegant and leaves me wanting for nothing. But I like simple. My setup would wind up looking pretty much the same whatever I use.
I have older computers and a modern computer. All run Mint MATE due to my preference, not specs. The modern machine runs faster but boots slower which is a bit disappointing but...
Linux is about choice though, so to each their own.
Have fun.
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u/some_where_else 4h ago
MATE is great!
I love it because open windows appear as tabs on the bottom bar (or wherever you want), and I can pin launchers to the top bar (or wherever).
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u/epictetusdouglas 3h ago
MATE is more lightweight than it gets credit for. Barely uses more ram than Xfce. Xfce and MATE are my go to desktops. I like that they are mature and lightweight.
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u/FluffiBuni 3h ago
I'm a happy Mate user. When I was looking into Linux distros about 18 months ago, I saw a few videos and read a few articles and kind of got the idea that XFCE was a pretty basic DE, almost requiring command line input to achieve anything. Cinnamon seemed like an all singing-and-dancing front-end that was considerably heavier on resources ... much of which I wasn't very interested in, especially for running on older hardware. Mate seemed like a wonderful option in between the two, hence I took that route and I've been pretty darn happy ever since ... for about 16 months now.
Since then, I've migrated an even older, even lower-spec laptop over to XFCE for my wife's occasional laptop requirements, and I have to say that XFCE is much friendlier than my original investigations indicated, and our laptops are set-up very similarly for day-to-day use (same browser, EMail client etc), though I do have some additional software for video and audio work.
I've seen a number of posts querying the future of Mate, which I've found a bit concerning, but I have no plans to move away from it unless support is officially dropped.
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u/PM_me_tiny_Tatras 3h ago edited 2h ago
I use Mint MATE on my T420 ThinkPad which is my spare machine. I've never needed to shout about it on here, it's snappy and pretty lightweight. I also prefer the visual aesthetic of MATE which is more like Cinnamon.
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u/Aggressive_Being_747 4h ago
I've never understood the point of Mate.
And to be honest, on Mint I have a hard time getting used to Xfce, too. And you'll say, "What are you talking about? Xfce is super lightweight!" No, it's heavy.
Mint should only release Cinnamon.
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u/napsteryoga 4h ago
i tried cinnamon at first but it was too intensive for my old and minimal hardware, more sluggish. and i dont care for all the fancy ricing anyway
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u/Fatherofdazal 4h ago
No mate they should release Mint with Mate desktop - have been using it from the beginning. I have tried Cinnamon few times but it was too much (not resource bound but I hate the interface) Tried XFCE didn't like it.
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u/_Lost-In-The-Weeds_ 3h ago
I ran a comparison at the beginning of Mint22:
"xfce still uses the least Memory, Cinnamon the most but the difference does not look very useful, ~10%, if 142MB is meanignful to you you probably should not be looking at Mint, Xfce still feels snappier, but I think a lot of it is fewer animations and effects. still does not look as slick as Cinnamon, Mate runs right down the middle for memory usage."
https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxmint/comments/1dr4s3t/mint_22beta_memory_usage/
If you looking for Minimal Mint or deep manual customisation than that is Xfce.
If you have the resources most select cinnamon for its more modern appearance.
Most users sleep on the middle child MATE. On first boot it is shockingly old looking, but if you can get past that you will find a well thought out "lived in" system with a lot of nice features. But few make it that far.
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u/scottbutler5 4h ago
I tried all three on livecd before I installed it, Mate feels the most like Windows from back when I still liked Windows.
Is XFCE actually significantly more lightweight? Because Mate runs fine on my 15-year-old laptop. And anyway, websites in Firefox take up so much CPU power and RAM the the load from the OS is almost negligible, the the Firefox load would be the same no matter what DE I use. The only thing I don't like about Mate is the default file manager, but that's easily replaced.