But at my $WORK, where we're mostly RHEL/CentOS based, it looks like
sticking with CentOS 6.9 is the best solution currently. Which kinda
stinks. Does Fedora work better or at least just as well when running
the Mate desktop?
I can't comment on Fedora, but I know that with Ubuntu being Gnome 3-based by default too, XFCE seems to work a bit better than other stripped down DEs; that is, when other parts of the distro assume Gnome (or are only tested on Gnome), fewer things seem to break under XFCE. Having said that, I've used it for so long as a server DE my opinion on this could be out of date.
— Jason