Hello Linux Geeksters.
Kali Linux is a penetration Debian based Linux distribution with a lot of forensics tools, created by the Backtrack Linux team.
It comes by default with KDE, Gnome 3, XFCE and LXDE. If you do not like Gnome 3, you should install Cinnamon or Mate.
In this article I will show you how to install Mate on Kali Linux.
Mate is not available in the Kali Linux repositories and so, you have to do some tweaks to integrate it.
Follow this instructions exactly for a successfull installation:
$ sudo su
# echo "deb http://repo.mate-desktop.org/debian wheezy main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
# apt-get update
# apt-get install mate-archive-keyring
# apt-get install git live-build cdebootstrap
# git clone git://git.kali.org/live-build-config.git
# cd live-build-config
# mkdir config/archives
# echo "deb http://repo.mate-desktop.org/debian wheezy main" > config/archives/mate.list.binary
# echo "deb http://repo.mate-desktop.org/debian wheezy main" > config/archives/mate.list.chroot
# cp /usr/share/keyrings/mate-archive-keyring.gpg config/archives/mate.key.binary
# cp /usr/share/keyrings/mate-archive-keyring.gpg config/archives/mate.key.chroot
# echo "sleep 20" >> config/hooks/z_sleep.chroot
# echo -e “xorg\nmate-archive-keyring\nmate-core\nmate-desktop-environment” >> config/package-lists/kali.list.chroot
This is it. Reboot an choose Mate from the graphical login menu. (source)