You could argue that Cinnamon is not really a “fork” per se. It is more of an alternative interpretation.
MATE is a true fork. When GNOME abandoned GNOME 2 for GNOME3 3, MATE picked up the GNOME 2 code and continued.
Cinnamon took GNOME 3 and built a different desktop experience on top of it. Specifically, they rejected the controversial GNOME Shell to present a more traditional desktop. The earliest attempts at Cinnamon tried to provide a traditional desktop in GNOME Shell itself. By the time Cinnamon 2 came out, GNOME Shell was completely gone.
Cinnamon also provides X-apps which is a suite of GNOME applications adapted to work with Cinnamon ( but also MATE and XFCE ). These really are forks.
Thanks for the detailed reply! Now that I think about it I do vaguely remember a desktop with GNOME shell featured and a bar at the bottom.
Man, the early days of GNOME 3 were awkward. I remember desperately trying stuff out now that GNOME 2 was phased out and ending up making my own de over openbox in the end. What a frustrating era.
we nominally now have yet another fork – Cosmic – born out of the frustration of having to do everything through Gnome extensions that would break with each new Gnome release … (well, that and @soller wanting to work in Rust)
Good grief :V
