MATE is a fork of GNOME 2.

It provides an intuitive and attractive desktop to users using
traditional metaphors.

--

Where does the name come from?

The name "MATE" comes from yerba mate, a species of holly native
to subtropical South America. Its leaves contain caffeine and are
used to make infusions and a beverage called mate.

--

This metaport installs only MATE base (lite, a lean desktop) with
file manager without any of extra applications. If you want to
have the most common user MATE applications, please install the
x11/mate metaport.

WWW: http://www.FreeBSD.org/gnome/