I like Mint distros, but I am not fond of Cinnamon or Gnome3. I really like staying away from Ubuntu offsprings (although I did get started with Ubuntu, years and years ago).
I really did Like Mint LMDE2 Mate, but Mint discontinued it and offers only LMDE3 in Cinnamon. I DO NOT LIKE Cinnamon.

Someone suggested installing 'mint-meta-mate' from Synaptic Packages, but I found that it is not part of Synaptic Packages.

It is simple to convert LMDE3 Cinnamon to LMDE3 MATE. Proceed to the following:

After installation of LMDE3 Cinnamon:
1)open Synaptic Package Manager
2)install all MATE and GNOME2 packages
3)uninstall all GNOME3 and Cinnamon packages
4)reboot

The #1 mistake Mint made was "Cinnamon"
The #2 mistake Mint made was discontinuing LMDE Mate/Gnome2

you should also be able to use Package Manager AKA synaptic,
and search for 'mint-meta-mate' and install that set of packages ..

if want to see the full range, then search on 'mint-meta' instead. ..

NB: the Cinnamon Desktop is the LinuxMint Main Product,
& was an in-house creation, by the LinuxMint.Team

MATE also uses gnome3 software.

1 members found this post helpful.

Mate also works fine with Gnome3 software uninstalled. LMDE3 works wonderfully and extremely fast after uninstalling ALL Gnome3 and Cinnamon software.

After checking, I found that 'mint-meta-mate' does not exist in Synaptic. It would have shown up in my search for 'Mate'.