Is MATE very similar to the GNOME 2 desktop?

[owemeacent]

I'm a very big fan of GNOME 2. I posted another thread about if I could have the classic mode included on debian and have it on other distros. And I really wants to have the same interface back, I used fallback mode until GNOME 3.8 when they exchanged it with classic mode, I was outraged. I heard that MATE was built from the old GNOME 2 source code, and I really want to try it out. I've used Linux Mint 15 MATE, but I don't think that is vanilla MATE because I saw Debian running with MATE. And it looks really similar to the GNOME 2 interface. So my questions are:
Is MATE very similar to the GNOME 2 desktop?
What's the difference between MATE and Cinnamon?
Any extra comments and info are welcome :)

[buzzingrobot]

MATE is essentially Gnome 2 source recompiled, with changes to keep things happy with contemporary code. Names have been changed to prevent conflicts when it's installed on Gnome 3 machines.

Mint installs the Mint Menu, which accounts for the major difference in appearance with traditional Gnome 2. You can disable the Mint Menu and activate the traditional Gnome 2 menus by right-clicking on the panel and editing your applet choices.

Otherwise, MATE looks, feels, and smells like Gnome 2. Follow the directions at mate-desktop.org to install it on Ubuntu, etc.

Cinnamon is Mint's so-called traditional desktop built on Gnome 3 components.It has a panel and it has a menu, but it looks and behaves differently than MATE.

I never take measurements, but I've found MATE to be more responsive than Cinnamon.

[kc1di]

Hi I'm using mate on ubuntu 12.04 lts and it works great feels very familiar. It's quite easy to install and run on Ubuntu.
Check it out here: (http://www.webupd8.org/2013/04/mate-16-released-install-it-in-ubuntu.html)

[tgalati4]

+1 on MATE.