Corel Linux first launched in 1999, from the same company that at the time owned the WordPerfect word processing software. While it was made to compete with Microsoft's Windows it quickly died off.
MATE is a continuation of the GNOME 2 code after GNOME 3 came out. It literally IS GNOME 2 just with a different name.
Cinnamon was also a reaction to GNOME 3 but it is an alternative desktop for GNOME 3 ( and newer ). It is mostly modern GNOME. It was never based on GNOME 2.
The only thing XFCE has in common with GNOME is that they both use GTK. XFCE was originally based on XForms ( the XF in XFCE ). It certainly has nothing to do with GNOME 2.
XFCE4 keeps adding more and more logind/dbus complexity in every gui they make, that can hardly be built without it. They have made it so systemd-centric it has become hard for systemd-free distributions to support it without hacking it all the time.
The pseudo-systemd-free distros using elogind don’t have much problems with it because 90% of systemd functionality is already available,
LXDE as DEs go, is still “clean” with most of it gtk2 or 3 optional
The only GNOME 2 desktop environment is MATE.
MATE is a continuation of the GNOME 2 code after GNOME 3 came out. It literally IS GNOME 2 just with a different name.
Cinnamon was also a reaction to GNOME 3 but it is an alternative desktop for GNOME 3 ( and newer ). It is mostly modern GNOME. It was never based on GNOME 2.
The only thing XFCE has in common with GNOME is that they both use GTK. XFCE was originally based on XForms ( the XF in XFCE ). It certainly has nothing to do with GNOME 2.
On the other hand, jwm doesn’t miss out much from MATE, LXDE, and it can tile as well, at a small fraction of the size (disk/ram/cpu).
@LeFantome @BananaTrifleViolin
XFCE4 keeps adding more and more logind/dbus complexity in every gui they make, that can hardly be built without it. They have made it so systemd-centric it has become hard for systemd-free distributions to support it without hacking it all the time.
The pseudo-systemd-free distros using elogind don’t have much problems with it because 90% of systemd functionality is already available,
LXDE as DEs go, is still “clean” with most of it gtk2 or 3 optional
@LeFantome @BananaTrifleViolin