Seems to me, my personal opinion only represented by me, is that the
Gnome 2 crowd is already here and established. The default presents itself fine for myself who is coming over from Unity, because I know that I can bend whatever desktop to my will anyways. The harder sell is the OSX crowd shifting over to Linux. I did that with my son at 14.04 and it went really smoothly with the Cupertino style layout. Similar but different, different…better. Correct me if I missed the point, but it is not a question of removing anything, but rather changing the batting order.
To steal a very Cupertino expression “Everybody Loves Christmas”, Mate-Tweak is that Christmas. A link in the Welcome screen would help, but I think a new user will run into it anyways when they are test driving.
Figure that Linux is a subset of the computing public, Debian base, and Ubuntu Mate further still. We all wound up here because it is similar but different, different…better. Just gotta share the love.
Gnome 2, Gnome 3, Unity, etc. is freedom of choice. Redmond and Cupertino represent freedom from choice. As a Linux user we take it for granted, but, it will likely be a foreign concept to choose if you come from the outside, so in the meantime training wheels don’t hurt. I personally have trouble with KDE because there are soooo many choices. There is little doubt that everyone has an opinion and that is something that needs to be embraced. There is always “a” way, not necessarily “the” way. That is as sincerely as I can put it. Conversations like these are good.
Wouldn’t the greater good be best served by giving the new user a familiar environment like Pantheon? I don’t intend to use it myself, but I can click the mouse on Mate-tweak and be back at Gnome 2 in no time. Strictly speaking, it is that first impression that will stick.