Linux Mint 15: C & M

Cinnamon and Mate. Review-like ...
I did it for nostalgic reasons (Mint was my first distro on Linux road; and also because I started this blog as intended help for n00bs.
Both Mint ISOs were 64bit Lives, written with Unetbootin to USB.

# Cinnamon
I didn't bother to install, just clicked around in Live.
It booted OK and desktop looked (again very) traditional Mint.
Cinnamon is simple-user oriented, allright. No question about that. I - as an advanced user - shouldn't whine about things-missing... but I do anyway.

Pros:
- Two panels are possible! Progress!
- Driver Manager: Now separate app.
- Software Sources: Much better usability.
- Get some frills and bling stright from internet. And new data is NOT mixed with default. You can pick what you want to add.
- Classic menu still installable (maybe - as it failed in Live).
- Login Window conf: New place to play.
- Cinnamon is ready for all usual user tasks, and has all ubuntuish 'restricted extras' (codecs, etc) installed.

Cons:
- MintMenu is still not resizable, not very-much-configurable Windowish thingy.
- File Manager Nemo is average. Definitely better than current Nautilus, but despite of various preferences, it's not especially configurable. Partitions list is not very clear and it is not in logical order. If partitions happen to be without labels, then it's probably total mess. (And the same goes for Mate, and it's even worse.) And of course you still can't remove some bookmarks. (And it's even worse in Mate.) Media handling default is clearly for idiot (err... careless?) user - play everything automatically.
- There is 'settings' icon on panel... it behaves ... strange and stupid way? Why it's there?
Desklets: Useless bling. Trying to be KDE?
- Startup Apps: Dumb-user stuff. Very few items there. Has 'maybe-options' all started... and real important things are not shown at all.
- Preferences: Looooong list of things... some of them are in System Settings, others you can get when using those apps. I suppose it's a bit confusing for Mints' intended users.

I think Mint Cinnamon devs succeeded again. It's a distro for a genuine 'User'. Nice. Smooth. Works out of box. Reminds of MS Windows - in a good way.
And it's definitely not for someone who wants to seriously tweak, tune and customize.
It's very good for a common user, and not so good for a tweaker.

# MATE
This one was installed for real. And strange enough - first Live boot hung just before desktop, I wrote USB over and then it booted OK.
As an afterthought - could be the same bug what appears later.
Installer is Ubuntus' usual - simple. Desktop is copy of previous one (Cinnamon).
Boot came with greeter error - but it 'switched' something and recovered. Next time was OK. After that I got some 'recursive error...' and everything froze, reboot - and greeter problem again.
By the way - boot time is twice longer than Debian Wheezys'.
Here, like in Cinnamon, everything is installed out of box.
Some things (Caja, Menu opening, System Monitor, ...) are a bit laggy to open, in operation, or when closing.

PROS:
- The same as in Cinnamon.
Additionally:
- There are no desklets and no strange 'settings'-thing on panel. Oh, good!
- I might be wrong, but there seems to be more configurable items in Control Centre compared to Cinnamon.
- Startup Apps: Sure, a lot more options to check/uncheck, and those are real, important ones.
- Services: Kinda 'Startup Apps' part separately. I am not sure if it's good to separate them... but they are available - which is good thing allright.
- Mint screensaver: Whatever looks better than stone-age Xscreensaver. Good.

CONS:
- There seems to be serious issue with boot and/or greeter.
- Mintmenu looks different here. Still can't resize it. I still don't like it. But classic one is available (pro-thing).
- File Manager Caja seems even less pleasant than Cinnamons' Nemo. List of partitions is especially cryptic, and default bookmarks are ALL undeletable.
- Time/Date on panel is automatically taken from location and not from language used - which is quite bizarre thing to do.
- Preferences and Control Center  are duplicates.
- Compositing seems to be the usual: tearing when scrolling and so on.

All in all: Mate seems better than it was in previous version. Generally a nice desktop for doing all simple user-stuff in most efficient way. It's n00b-friendly. And it leaves a bit more playground than Cinnamon. Definitely recommended to Linux newcomers. The same as with Cinnamon - userfriendly.