h3o
I suspect this quote has a lot to do with it

I came from Ubuntu Studio on 14.04 which was one of the most polished XFCE experiences I've had to date. I was enjoying the low memory footprint and speed relative to Unity. Towards the end, XFCE had grown so buggy with other updates that I was forced to install a PPA to get a newer version just to have fewer issues. Going over 4 years without a new version was getting pretty bad. Then I installed Solus, and even with Budgie which was heavier on memory, everything was just so much faster and responsive on Solus that it no longer mattered to me the Budgie used a bit more RAM than I was used to. I have also used MATE on both systems and definitely think it's smoother on Solus.

I think most of us would say MATE is a superior experience because it has been actively maintained, seems to have fewer bugs, and feels the most like GNOME 2 these days.

Source: https://discuss.getsol.us/d/5092-about-the-mate-version/15

So there was a long time there where it was thought to be dead, xfce were still busy porting to gtk3 and Mate was much more active. 4 years without a release could be rather annoying for a rolling distro. Wanna update $X? We can't XFCE needs version x.y.z... Guess we'll wait a few more years for them to pull their finger out etc.

    h3o MATE has been much more actively developed than XFCE for starters. By the time we added MATE to the repos in 2016, XFCE had just started their initial port from GTK2 to GTK3. It wasn't until 2019 that they released 4.14. That's 4 years between 4.14 and 4.12 (4.13 was skipped). In that same time period, MATE had 8 releases. This might not seem like a big deal to some people, but for anyone who has had to deal with GNOME stack upgrades, something will break almost every time. MATE is very quick to fix these things and offers proper patch releases to address compatibility issues and bugs between releases.

    I know some people get really hung-up on resource usage with DEs, which is a fair point on low resource machines. Nowadays, XFCE and MATE are very close in RAM usage. Both of them are light on the special effects and ship with their own set of applications (though MATE has more). CPU isn't really a factor with any of our supported DEs.

    As a former XFCE user of many years, I can say that MATE is much closer to GNOME 2, which I happen to think is a good thing! The applications are all well written and fairly uniform from a UI standpoint. Not to mention that MATE has a few more applications that XFCE. This helps it integrate a lot better and adds to the visual consistency, by not having to supplement with additional applications from outside of the DE.

    Couple all of this with the excellent support we have gotten from the MATE developers and I can honestly say MATE was the best choice in hindsight.

        DataDrake thanks! Also, after reading through the thread Harvey shared above, many more thanks for taking the time to provide more insight into the decision. Always appreciate hearing the Solus Team's perspective on these things : )

            4 months later

            DataDrake Hi! Do you think there is a significant difference between Solus GNOME and MATE when I'm on several tabs on Firefox, using Kdenlive, and GIMP? I get a bit paranoid about my computer running out of resources, and always aim for a lower-end DE, but you said CPU isn't a factor in any of the supported DEs, and that made me think if I should just go ahead and install Budgie instead of worrying about resources. I have 8 gigs of RAM, using i3 processor (7130u Kaby Lake), and have 850 EVO SSD. Thank you!

                TskTskUgh Go for it. You have a relatively modern computer, you should be fine running any of the DEs, so just choose whichever you like the most / are most curious about.

                There's no need to worry so much about the system resources as long as stuff is running smoothly. It's only when you encounter some issues affecting you (that you can't solve), when you should start looking for an alternative DE.

                    3 months later

                    DataDrake I think that MATE is just great de although it doesn't look the best. Their daemon of settings is a real work of art: they installed the program -- settings appeared for it. Why Budgie doesn't use the mate settings daemon, but is gnome-dependent?

                        George mate settings daemon

                        Screenshot? I assume it looks similar to Cinnamon Settings?
                        I prefer the Gnome Settings layout.

                            2 months later

                            My 2 cents:

                            I am and was always curious about Linux desktops and like to try out this and that to find the optimal solution for private and business use.

                            Even though I have a rather high-end laptop I think a lightweight environment could get the maximum even from such a machine. So I had a look at XFCE...

                            It seems like a lighter Gnome and can be customized to even look acceptable.
                            BUT: For 10 years now they can not manage to handle the super/meta key to open the stupid menu, just like every other DE can. That may sound weird, but that already turns me off a lot.
                            Also when I tried in in a virtual machine (Gnome Box) it was always the case that after a simple update the DE wouldn't load anymore after login.
                            And that is not only on me. If you search the Internet, that kind of stuff happens for years now.

                            I like the idea of XFCE, but they have serious problems that render it unusable.

                            Also had a look at LXQT, especially combined with KWin. It looks nice and is usable. But has no serious support for HiDPI and that in 2021. So, that fell off as well.

                            I am running Solus Budgie as a daily driver and it is mostly fine for me. Even though some things could still have better workflows and it is kind of half Gnome (Settings), I like it for its simplicity and clean interface.
                            Some things I miss from Cinnamon, which I would have continued to use if it didn't freeze from time to time, forcing me to a hard reboot, which already destroyed data on my machine.
                            That kind of stuff doesn't happen on Solus Budgie!