Yup, MATE hits that sweet spot of "Customized, Functional, NoFutzing" for me.
When Ubuntu came out with Unity after the Gnome2 desktop I added the MATE desktop, which imported most Gnome2 settings. Linux Mint's LMDE with MATE kept those settings, which have persisted through Ubuntu-MATE and now Debian with MATE.
Anyone know if the MATE folks are in the #Fediverse?