[cjm42]

MATE is a GNOME 2 fork created to continue its development without the radical turn of GNOME 3.

Cinnamon is actually a GNOME 3 fork created to turn it back into a more traditional desktop environment.

XFCE is not a fork of any version of GNOME, although it does have a UI similar to GNOME 2 and is based on GTK.

Personally, I switched to XFCE back when GNOME 3 came out, and have been happy with it.