Mate
Version: Web: http://mate-desktop.org
Modern Gnome is a desktop environment where the traditional desktop computing metaphor meets best practices from the mobile world of easy-to-use touchscreen devices. But, if we cast an eye back to the past, it wasn’t always this way, we remember when the previous generation of Gnome (2.x series) was dominating on Linux desktops, which helped bring it to an enterprise-level quality.
Gnome 2 inspired Red Hat engineers to roll out their beautiful Bluecurve theme that was the first attempt to unify the look and feel of GTK-base and Qt-based applications. This was a couple of years after, Novell triumphed with its innovative XGL desktop, which was also based on Gnome 2. There are also many other reasons why Gnome 2 matters and why many people miss the desktop despite the Gnome Shell (3.x) being also very good.
Mate is a fork of Gnome 2, and a successful attempt to take over the development of the quickly-abandoned code of Gnome 2. Visually Mate is nearly identical to its predecessor; you can only set it apart by looking at the logo.
Due to compatibility reasons, Mate avoids intersecting with Gnome 3 applications by renaming forked ones from Gnome 2. For instance, Nautilus here is called Caja, Gedit is Pluma and FileRoller is Engrampa etc. It takes time to get accustomed to the new names but once you do you’ll find yourself being very productive with this familiar, practical and blazingly fast desktop.
Mate is less about a nostalgic walk towards a dead end and more about bringing the traditional strengths of Gnome 2 into the contemporary world. This shows in a number of things, such as: its maturing integration with GTK3 (version 3.18 is now supported); better handling of multi-touch devices; stable and solid work in multi-monitor configurations; Systemd support and its numerous improvements and fixed usability (such as indicators, applets and sessions management).
Mate development is backed by the mighty Linux Mint team that ships Mate as the officially supported desktop (along with Cinnamon) in its distribution (distro). That’s a simple way to try Mate, but it’s also widely available for many other distros, including Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Arch Linux and many others. See the official guidelines on the project’s website.
“Bringing the strengths of Gnome 2 into the contemporary world.”