I've been using Linux Mint with Cinnamon for a while, but I'm getting bored with its look and would like to recreate the classic GNOME 2-style desktop. Since MATE is its successor, would installing it alongside Cinnamon cause conflicts or mess up my existing setup? Is it safer to use separate user accounts, or should I try MATE in a virtual machine first?
5 Answers
You can install MATE and select it from the login screen. Many people mix applications from different environments without trouble, but it helps to choose one preferred app for each purpose so the menus do not become overwhelming. If you only want to experiment, separate user accounts, a live USB session, or a virtual machine are safer ways to test before changing your main installation.
Installing multiple desktop environments is generally possible, and MATE is a natural choice if you want the old GNOME 2 feel. The main drawbacks are extra disk usage, duplicate applications in the menus, and several programs with similar names, such as multiple settings or terminal tools. Cinnamon and MATE are both GTK-based, so they may coexist reasonably well, but they can still influence shared themes, fonts, default applications, and other desktop settings.
MATE should be a good fit for this particular goal, and classic-looking themes are available to make it resemble older GNOME releases. Desktop environments do not automatically damage one another, but installing several full environments can add a lot of packages and make later removal messy. If MATE becomes your favorite, you can eventually remove Cinnamon, though checking which packages will be removed is important.
The real risk is using different desktop environments under the same user account. They may write to shared configuration files or compete over settings services, which can lead to changed themes, fonts, default applications, or other confusing behavior. Usually this is recoverable, but diagnosing the cause can be frustrating; in the worst case, you may need to rebuild parts of your ~/.config directory.
There is no strict limit on how many desktop environments you can install beyond available disk space. The practical issues are clutter and configuration overlap, not that the system will immediately break. Lightweight environments and window managers usually add less duplicate software, while large environments such as KDE or GNOME bring many more applications and services with them.
Using separate user accounts for each desktop is the safer option. It keeps their configuration files apart and makes it less likely that changing themes or desktop preferences in one environment will affect the other.