When comparing Pantheon vs MATE, the Slant community recommends MATE for most people. In the question“What are the best UNIX-like desktop environments for developers?” MATE is ranked 6th while Pantheon is ranked 10th. The most important reason people chose MATE is:
All MATE 1.24 components are ported to GTK3 and fully support HiDPI.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Simple, clean aesthetic
Nonintrusive and easy to overview workspace.
Pro Lightweight
Pantheon is light on system resources, giving it the advantage of being able run well on a multitude of setups.
Pro Looks amazing
Looks absolutely amazing. Very nice to use. Amazing UX.
Pro Smooth, subtle animations
Nearly everything is animated, but it's not over the top.
Pro Splitting and animations
Switching between workspaces is fluid, pulling up the workspace preview bumps up the rest of the desktop, open windows show up on the switcher along with larger icons, and everything is subtly animated. You have two windows taking each half the screen by dragging to corners.
Pro Highly modular
While built to be integrated, Pantheon is also highly modular. Shell components like the Panel, Dock, and app launcher can be swapped out with limited repercussions.
Pro Great for minimalists
Although you cannot put icons on desktop, it comes with very low number of pre-installed softwares.
Pro Perfect for chromebook
It's light and easy.
Pro Slick, smooth desktop environment
Easy to use and easy to configure, there is almost nothing that the developers did not think of to creat a top-notch user experience.
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.
Cons
Con Poor reputation among Linux users
The whole Elementary OS project has a poor reputation among Linux users.
Con No icons on desktop
Con Too simple
Good for people who want a plug and play simple Desktop Environment. But for a multitasking / entertainment / cutting edge or Gaming Rig this is not the answer.
Con Requires tweaks to be usable
To enable things like the minimize button, status bar indicators, and what some might call "normal" desktop features, you need to tweak the system to make it usable.
Con Uses GTK
Nowadays, GTK is designed with GNOME, and only GNOME, in mind. Non-GNOME applications which attempt to utilize it suffer as a result. Pantheon is no exception.
Con Few configuration options
It is pretty bare-bones on a stock install, but further configuration options can be added through various official tweak tools.
Con Buggy
Con Not ideal for enterprise environments
As it has no set release date, and no set support and/or EOL dates, that makes it a not so good choice for enterprises managing a number of machines where such dates are important to know before hand.
Con Slow maintenance
Any significant updates come with new release, which usually takes 2-3 years. Hence gets obsolete with current software.
Con Not available for major Linux distributions
Con Limited to eOS-only
It means Pantheon won't work properly if installed on other distros. Manjaro has given up on trying since it works better on a LTS system and takes an eternity to realease a new version or add security updates. On Arch, Pantheon also doesn't work properly. People are trying it on Fedora, not sure how it works now. If you want to use Pantheon, better get to eOS.
Con Looks and feels like a Mac
Which may turn quite a few people off with the aesthetics, of course for some people, this is a pro.
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.