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MATE has forked a number of applications originating as the GNOME Core Applications, and developers have written several other applications from scratch. The forked applications have new names - mostly in Spanish:

Caja (box) – File manager (from Nautilus)
Pluma (quill) – Text editor (from Gedit)
Eye of MATE – Image viewer (from Eye of GNOME)
Atril (lectern) – Document viewer (from Evince)
Engrampa (staple) – Archive manager (from File Roller)
MATE Terminal – Terminal emulator (from GNOME Terminal)
Marco (frame) – Window manager (from Metacity)
Mozo (waiter)  – Menu item editor (from Alacarte)

What it use different name for well-known programs? It make user confused (e.g. gedit foo.txt breaks and I have to run pluma foo.txt) They are almost the same as the original ones. Wasn't it better they send their modification to main branch?

Braiam
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Handsome Nerd
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    Unsure what question you're asking here. Or are you just expressing your discontent at the name change? Wikipedia page for MATE has detail concerning the rationale of the name change (apps rewritten or forked from their original GNOME app so needing new name) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATE_(software) – steve Aug 10 '15 at 17:31
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    Yeah, what steve said and maybe read some on [forks](http://producingoss.com/en/forks.html). There are many obvious reasons why names are changed and _avoiding confusion_ is one of them... @steve - why tagging `gnome3` ? `mate` has nothing to do with `gnome3` it's a fork of `gnome2` – don_crissti Aug 10 '15 at 17:35
  • I would think this question is too broad - the changing of names will be down to the developers involved in the application/program being changed (and is best to ask them). – Drav Sloan Aug 10 '15 at 17:45
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    Because they wanted to. What more is needed? – Bytor Aug 10 '15 at 17:48
  • Also, in reply to your latest edit: _"Wasn't it better they send their modification to main branch?"_ The main branch you're talking about (Gnome 2) is _dead_ (i.e. abandoned and no longer maintained by the the original authors). – don_crissti Aug 10 '15 at 19:23

2 Answers2

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The applications were renamed to avoid conflicting with their GNOME 3 counterparts.

For example, in Debian Jessie I can install both caja and nautilus, at the same time.

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The most practical reason: so the binaries don't collide with the forks.

If you type nautilus while having MATE and GNOME installed, which would be executed? It wouldn't be possible to even having both installed at the same time due sharing namespace in the directories too.

That's why forks normally rename the specific applications, apart of the obvious of having a identity of its own, preventing confusions.

Braiam
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