A proposal is just that. Implementing is another.Traditionally, Trisquel has had two variants -- default GNOME desktop and a lightweight DE (currently LXDE).
MATE has been chosen and it's still in beta. I dare not hope that there would be another big change in the near future. Ruben should just nail it.
Moreover, if Xfce was taken up as the default in any future release, the panel would still most likely stay at the bottom.
