MATE (software)

MATE (/ˈmɑːteɪ/; Spanish pronunciation: [ˈmate]) is a desktop environment forked from the now-unmaintained codebase of GNOME 2.

Description

It is named after the South American plant Yerba mate and tea made from the herb, mate.

The use of a new name, instead of GNOME, avoids conflicts with GNOME 3 components.

GNOME 3 (released in April 2011) replaced the classic desktop metaphor, substituting its native user interface: GNOME Shell.

This action led to some criticism from the Linux community.

Some users refused to accept the new interface design of GNOME and called for continued development of GNOME 2.

An Argentine user of Arch Linux started the MATE project in order to meet this demand and announced the availability of Mate on 18 June 2011.