At first glance, you may not notice a great deal of difference between MATE and Cinnamon. This is due to the fact that the Mint developers modeled the default layout of MATE to look closer to their other offerings, so as to create a consistent look and feel between versions. If you look at the screenshots on the official MATE website (mentioned earlier), you'll notice that the version included in Mint looks quite a bit different than how MATE does by default. Despite the similarities in how the Mint developers have set it up, MATE is a completely different desktop environment and is unrelated to Cinnamon. The following screenshot shows the MATE desktop environment:

When you click on the Applications menu, you'll notice one difference right away; MATE uses a different application launcher. Many consider the application launcher in MATE to be superior for several reasons. For example, there is a text box on the bottom of the...