It appear to me that mate and cinnamon are not a more stable and/or mature alternatives, when compare to Xfce.
This is the DE that I use in my Brigantia setup without any issues and I truly fill to be in control of the desktop v/s the actual Gnome fallback, that while is very nice, it lacks customizations options when compare to Xfce. I guess that´s why the terminal and synaptic for that matter are my friends. :)
