>>106215196 (OP)
Mate is, generically speaking, more "complete" than xfce4 in terms of utilities but being the gnome2 fork it's essentially abandonware (even though it was ported to gtk3). Xfce4 conversely has less componenrs but is actively developed.
Imo i prefer xfce4 because is more granular and configurable (and doesn't shit it's pants with some themes).
richard stallman said if he had to use a desktop environment it would be mate. mate just works it has just what you need. i find that it is less resource intensive than xfce on my t420 personally
>>106216128 >>106216197 >>106216308
Xfce is demonstrably more responsive than MATE. Average time from activation of a UI element to display in Xfce is a hair under 1ms, whereas in MATE, it is a hair over 2ms. The only DE faster than Xfce is LXQt.
>>106216197 >old is le bad
I think they made the perfect desktop environment and it really doesn't need to be modernized. I love using it on my laptop and I have no need for updates