2011
A traumatic release
When GNOME 3 replaces GNOME 2 it's a catastrophe for Linux Mint. Many features (the panel, the tray, the menu...etc) are missing and neither the desktop, the theme engine nor the toolkit are stable.
Despite the reimplementation of most of the missing features, the release of Linux Mint 12 "Lisa" based on GNOME 3 is not good enough and is still to this day considered by the team as a regression.
To guarantee its future Linux Mint decides to widen the scope of its development and invests in 2 alternatives to GNOME 3: MATE, a joint project which consists in renaming GNOME 2 and bringing it back, and Cinnamon, a Mint project, which consists in adapting GNOME 3 and turning it into a full-featured desktop.
