this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2024
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I'm happy with KDE since 2009. But I'd have a really hard time if I were to choose between those two.
I think I "know" MATE because before KDE I used to use Gnome2 so it feels nostalgic to me. The Applications/Places/System menu was the tits and it beat the shit of whatever start menu you put in front of it, and Gnome's decision to get rid of it was the stupidest idea ever (among many other of their utterly stupid decisions). I'd really miss that menu if it weren't for that I got used to associate some keystrokes to launch my favorite apps so I don't even use a start menu or whatever, rather than Krunner.
On the con side it seems to me MATE is being developed at a slower pace than Xfce's, and it seems less customizable than it - well, at least for me that's a con - thought I'm not really a "ricer" or anything I just got used to a certain way to do things on the desktop and I remember having to fiddle with Gconf2 to do stuff like you did with friggin' Windows Registry editor.
I got to use Xfce back in the day too. It has an Applications/Places menu just so people wouldn't think they blatantly copied Gnome, but it's more than 10 years since Gnome got rid of it so I don't know why they haven't took it. Xfce feels somewhat more customizable, has the veteran badge and seems to have more developers backing it up.
But it's being developed with GTK+3/4 so I guess at some point they'll suffer from the ~~shittification~~Gnome-ization of GTK and, as I said before in some other post, if I were them I'd move all my shit to the E libraries (even more, I'd do a fusion of the Enlightenment desktop and Xfce). Also I happen to be a graphic designer so the lack of care they have onto some things sticks like a sore thumb to me, like those poorly designed settings dialogs on some stuff that even have some dumb horizontal scrolling just because they couldn't care less about that.
I am not sure how I feel about it but there seems to be some resistance in the GTK world. Desktops like Cinnamon,MATE, and XFCE have said they are going to stick with GTK3. Mint has proposed a common suite of GTK3 apps called Xapps that would maintain GTK3 versions of some of the applications that GNOME has pulled to GTK4.
https://linuxmint-developer-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/xapps.html
One of the best things about the GTK world was that you had a choice of DEs but got the same universe of “native” applications with any of them. Sadly, it seems that there may now be GNOME and “other GTK” DE universes. On the plus side, there will be a haven for those that want off the GNOME train without as much “left behind” feel as MATE users have had.
Just on your Enlightenment point there, I tried Bodhi Linux a few years ago because the Enlightenment desktop looked really good, but over time they (Bodhi) had to create their own desktop because Enlightenment appeared to have almost stopped work.
Might be something for you to check out...?
Of course not - if Xfce has too few people working on it, MATE has even less than them, and Enlightenment has even less than MATE. And note that Enlightenment is not only the desktop environment per se but the E libraries (and those are no regurgitated shit - for example, some car makers have used them on their infotainment systems). I'd think it'd be amazing if those two (or those three) could do a Dragon-ball-z kind of fusion, I think those three have really similar goals. Hell, if that was actually a thing most probably I'd move to that.
I know Xfce folks have submitted patches to GTK over the years, but it's just that GNOME's enshittification has pregnated GTK to a point of no return and Xfce devs are very well aware of that (for example, the libadwaita thing).