What is the Difference Between Cinnamon and Mate

The main difference between Cinnamon and Mate is that Cinnamon is a free and open source desktop environment for X Window System derived from GNOME 3 while Mate is a desktop environment consisting of free and open source software that runs on Linux and most BSD Unix systems.

A desktop environment is an implementation of the desktop metaphor. It consists of programs running on an operating system. Moreover, it shares a common graphical user interface. Thus, Cinnamon and Mate are two such desktop environments.

Key Areas Covered

1. What is Cinnamon
     – Definition, Functionality
2. What is Mate
     – Definition, Functionality
3. What is the Difference Between Cinnamon and Mate
     – Comparison of Key Differences

Key Terms

Cinnamon, GNOME, Mate

What is Cinnamon

Cinnamon is the principal desktop environment of Linux Mint distribution. It is also available as an optional desktop for other Linux distributions and other operating systems similar to UNIX. Moreover, Cinnamon is available in Linux Mint 12 repositories. Additionally, it is available for Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch Linux, Debian, FreeBSD, etc.

Cinnamon includes various features such as animations, transition and transparency effects. The panels generally consist of a main menu, launchers, a window list, etc. Moreover, the system tray is adjustable on left, right, upper or lower edges of the screen. The settings editor is capable of providing easy customization. It can customize panel, themes, applets, desktop effects, calendar, etc. There are also applets and different extensions. Applets are icons or texts that appear on the panel. Extensions can also change the functionalities of Cinnamon. Moreover, developers can upload the themes, applets, extensions to Cinnamon’s web page so that the users can download and rate them.

What is Mate

Mate is a free and open source desktop environment that runs on Linux and most BSD Unix derivatives. MATE has several applications which are initially created as GNOME Core applications. Furthermore, developers have written a few applications from scratch.

Generally, Mate application includes file manager, text editor, documents viewer, archive manager, terminal emulator, window manager, menu item editor, etc. Furthermore, Mate fully supports the GTE+3 application framework.

Difference Between Cinnamon and Mate

Definition

Cinnamon is a free and open source desktop environment for the X Window System derived from GNOME 3 while Mate is a desktop environment composed of free and open source software that runs in Linux and most BSD Unix derivatives. Thus, this is the main difference between Cinnamon and Mate.

Developer

Linux Mint Team is the developer of Cinnamon while Stefano Karapetsas is the developer of Mate.

Language

Moreover, an important difference between Cinnamon and Mate is that Cinnamon is written in C, JavaScript, and Python while Mate is written in C, C++, and Python.

Operating System

Furthermore, while Cinnamon is for Unix-like with X operating system, Mate is for Unix-like with X11 (X Window System).

License

Besides, Cinnamon license is GPL v2 while Mate license is GNU LGPL v2, GNU v2. Hence, this is another difference between Cinnamon and Mate.

Conclusion

In brief, Cinnamon and Mate are two desktop environments. The main difference between Cinnamon and Mate is that Cinnamon is a free and open source desktop environment for X Window System derived from GNOME 3 while Mate is a desktop environment that consists of free and open source software that runs on Linux and most BSD Unix systems.

Reference:

1.“Cinnamon (Software).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 7 Mar. 2019, Available here.
2. “MATE (Software).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 4 Apr. 2019, Available here.
3. “Desktop Environment.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 23 Jan. 2019, Available here.

Image Courtesy:

1. “Mate-desktop-16-ubuntu-1210-1024px” By JohnDoe777 – Own work (CC BY-SA 3.0) via Commons Wikimedia
2. “Linux Mint 18.3 Cinnamon Mint X” By Kesäperuna – Own work (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Commons Wikimedia

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