Why does MATE look different in Mint?

[Fred Barclay]

I used the MATE edition of Mint some time ago, and was a bit confused. I understood it to be the continuation of Gnome 2, but it looked nothing like it--in fact, it sort of reminded me of Windows 10. I figured that looks are not everything, since Cinnamon is based on Gnome 3 and looks nothing like it (and is far superior, IMHO)
Now, however, I just installed MATE as a desktop in Debian Jessie. It looks so similar to Gnome 2! Why is the same desktop different in Mint and Debian?

[tenfoot]

Is it because Mint uses the Mint Menu by default and places the Panel on the bottom of the screen, whereas Debian uses the Menu Bar (I think) and places the Panel at the top of the screen?

[raptir]

Yeah, as above it's simply a matter of the default configuration being different. You can remove the mintmenu from the panel, add a top panel and add the standard menu if you want. Xfce sees similar changes in Mint, where it uses whiskermenu instead of the default application menu, and puts the panel at the bottom.

[cmost]

The beauty of Linux DE's in general (including MATE) is that everything is highly customizable. You can have MATE look like traditional Gnome 2, Windows XP, Windows 7, Apple's Mac OS, XFCE or literally anything in between. Enjoy!