Tim I agree with what you are saying but as someone who knows MATE quite well and is an active participant in that project (the forum) it irks me to no end when people use it and complain yet do absolutely nothing to help. I know of a couple of instances where people have posted usability issues and the devs have worked on them. One fellow felt physically ill with the line that scrolls across when downloading, the devs have been working with him on that because it is a usability feature for a very small group of users (I'd suggest way less than 1%).