I just found out about MATE a few days ago. I was looking into a Linux distro I could switch to since my laptop, which has Windows 10, doesn’t have the hardware requirements for 11. I looked into bodging a solution but honestly I’d prefer not to deal with that if it ends up being hard to get security updates for 11 in the future. Also I of course don’t like Microsoft, nor Windows, as a general concept even if the OS works well for my use cases.
I had a dual boot with Linux Mint in the past but I switched back to just Windows 10 for various reasons. This time around I wanted something different because I had tried Mint in the past but wasn’t particularly enthralled by it. I also needed something very beginner friendly because I don’t have a crazy amount of time to tinker especially because I’m a student and my semester is starting soon.
What’s surprising to me is how little MATE is mentioned in lists of beginner distros! I don’t know why this is. Mint is mentioned absolutely everywhere, as is ZorinOS and elementary OS. I don’t understand why this is. This is especially confounding for me because MATE installed 10 times easier for me than Mint, and Mint is supposed to be easy to install. This is especially important for me because my laptop is a Microsoft Surface which feels like it does everything it can to prevent me from using Linux easily.
Just thought I’d share my experience finding MATE! I hope people continue to find it like me, whether or not they’re familiar with Linux.
Don’t know how relevant this response is…