MATE is a GNOME 2 fork created to continue its development without the radical turn of GNOME 3. Cinnamon is actually a GNOME 3 fork created to turn it back int

MATE is a GNOME 2 fork created to continue its development without the radical turn of GNOME 3. Cinnamon is actually a GNOME 3 fork created to turn it back into a more traditional desktop environment. XFCE is not a fork of any version of GNOME, although it does have a UI similar to GNOME 2 and is based on GTK. Personally, I switched to XFCE back when GNOME 3 came out, and have been happy with it.