Understanding the differences between MATE and Cinnamon

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

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