When comparing MATE vs Pop!_OS, the Slant community recommends Pop!_OS for most people. In the question“What is the best OS for an old Macbook?” Pop!_OS is ranked 2nd while MATE is ranked 15th. The most important reason people chose Pop!_OS is:
If you're a fan of flat desktop interfaces reminiscent of Material design on Android, you'll like the theme that comes as a default in Pop! OS. The desktop and title bars all use a bright turquoise theme that makes the interface feel happy and borderline retro-chic. I found it to be like something you'd find printed on a ringer t-shirt.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Full HiDPI support
All MATE 1.24 components are ported to GTK3 and fully support HiDPI.
Pro Has window borders
Other than GNOME or Xfce, MATE has not introduced OSX-alike Client Side decorations
Pro Many new features
The MATE team added plenty of power user features that were perviously rejected by the GNOME team.
Pro Extremely customizable
MATE is customizable from every aspect. And very much stable compared to another Desktop environment.
Pro Works great on old machines
It uses a traditional Interface and less eye-candy/bling bling than KDE for example which results in very low system requirements.
Pro Very stable
MATE is initally based on the very stable GNOME 2 codebase that was for years the defacto enterprise desktop for every Linux system.
Pro Traditional desktop experience
MATE use a traditional desktop layout with panels that can be extended through plugins. It also disables some GTK3/GNOME3 features like: client side decorations and overlay scrollbars. MATE applications have also not introduced touch based ui elements like: popover menus and switch buttons.
Pro Distraction-free environment
There is no bling bling on this desktop so you can fully concentrate on your work.
Pro Multiple panels work great across multiple displays
This is very simple, but it is something much appreciate: the panel's window list is per display. So if you move a window over your second display, it gets transferred to the window list on the second display's panel. Multiple display support works very intuitively, right out of the box, with minimal tweaking.
Pro Has menu icons
MATE has icons in every popupmenu which makes navigating through them very fast.
Pro Full and fast
Scales better, full compliment themed applets, easily customization. App/Place/Sys menu and other menus, Mint version set at bottom for new Linux users. OPTION for panel background or follows system(with "controls") for theme matching.
Pro Pays its developpers
Thanks to the Patreon page, money is collected to pay for the developers maintaining and adding new features to MATE.
Pro Follows the GNOME2 HIG
Pro MATE is a serviceable choice
MATE is a solid serviceable choice for a DE. It is reliable and easy to customize. However, it lacks the icon placement in multiple monitors found in Cinnamon, KDE, or Windows.
Pro Does not need a composite manager
You can use it without GPU hardware acceleration.
Pro Pop! makes GNOME look really good
If you're a fan of flat desktop interfaces reminiscent of Material design on Android, you'll like the theme that comes as a default in Pop! OS. The desktop and title bars all use a bright turquoise theme that makes the interface feel happy and borderline retro-chic. I found it to be like something you'd find printed on a ringer t-shirt.
Pro User-friendly installer
The visually appealing and easy to use installer makes dual booting as easy as it can be.
Pro Ready to play games, out of the box
If you still miss how easy it was to just click-install and play games in Windows, Pop! will give you that similar expectation.
Pro Nice gnome theme dy default
Has nice gnome theme looks really good.
Pro A separate NVIDIA version
Most linux distros seem to hate Nvidia's graphics cards e.g. Fedora and OpenSUSE. System76 have decided to be kind. They have decided to form a good relationship with Nvidia fans and Nvidia itself. By creating a separate installation media that is dedicated for providing support to Nvidia's graphics cards. Even going as far as putting Nvidia's driver updates on Pop!_Shop for users to easily access and install.
Pro Optimized for modern hardware
Whereas normally, to use a brand new computer with a Linux OS, you would typically try to use unstable and sometimes buggy drivers - or struggle without hardware support until a stable release comes along.
Pro Made by a hardware seller
System76 is a hardware company. It configures machines to ship with Linux pre-installed. This means its entire business model centers around delivering a quality desktop Linux experience.
As a result, the company pours more attention onto the desktop. It can fix visual issues and may be able to provide a smoother overall experience than you would have installing a different version of Linux on your machine yourself. Providing Pop!_OS also empowers System76 to make certain fixes for users directly rather than having to coordinate with Canonical or the broader Ubuntu community.
Cons
Con Some rough edges
Some apps have really rough edges, for example:
- Caja: by open an SVG-file and get a Dialog with 4 Buttons (Run in Terminal, Display, Cancel & Run) at least two of them make no sense. You can also right click on them to choose the application, however your default application for that filetype is not on this list.
- Panel: Empty panel applets are about 1px wide so you really can't resize or move them to organize your panel.
Con Not for touchscreens
Follows the classic desktop formula. It is also not designed for the use with a touchscreen.
Con Requires XML for wallpapers
MATE requires an additional XML file for wallpapes to store metadata like effects (for slideshows), its author, license and translations.
Con Thick window
Con No official forum
Instead of having an official forum, users are redirected to their distributions support forums.
You might get help at distribution specific forums but there is no proper way to communicate with the whole MATE community or its developers.
Con MATE can not save icon positions on desktop
Con It's Gnome 2, which is just a more difficult to use XFCE
Gnome 2 was a more bloated and less useful version of Xfce, and it still is now that it's called MATE. UI feels outdated compared to modern versions of Plasma, Gnome, and even Xfce.
Con Issues with changing users permissions and access
Con Unfriendly and hostile developers
Con 64-bit only
Some older PCs still have 32 Bit processors. This limitation will be a major con for those who use an older PC since they will not be able to install, run it in a VM or live media