I switched to linux in 2007 and never looked back. I had a Windows machine and an Ubuntu Linux machine side by side. I decided I was going to use Linux every day until I got to the point where I'd want to go back to Windows. I never went back.

The name of the game for the average user is abstraction. What the Linux Mate team has done (well, any desktop team has done this) is abstract the shell to the desktop. I'm a Gnome 3 user and have never gone back to the menu driven desktop. By my reading of your article, the Mate team has taken abstraction beyond what Gnome has done.

For now, Gnome is good enough for me and I don't see any reason to change at the moment. What I like about your article is the news that Mate has taken customization to a new level, even for people who don't know scripting or config files.

The variety of Linux desktops is what makes Linux so appealing to so many people. I don't think there is a "desktop war" or a need for one. There are so many different user interfaces that it's easy to mix and match what we want in a desktop. We can take what we want and leave the rest behind.