No offense, but I'm going to agree with @sgage on the theming point in particular: Actually, many of us who use MATE are more than a little nostalgic. Look around the screenshots on the forum lately to see what I mean; as many as 20% of the screenshots I've seen here have been of MATE with the TraditionalOk theme, which is supposed to emulate the old Clearlooks theme of GNOME 2 yore. So as much as I might agree with many of your comments, @ludditus, I also disagree that "most people" would really like Yaru. Just look at this trending post to see what I mean: A cross-between Yaru and TraditionalOk? Presenting Yaru ok... or an attempt.