Description of problem: I used gnome2 in Fedora 14. When I updated to Fedora 17, I couldn't set up any of the standard spins the way that I wanted. LXDE was the closest, but it was missing utilities in the panel. I installed mate, and it has been working and seems well integrated.
I am currently working on packaging Mate Desktop for Fedora but it hasn't been easy. There is a currently (unofficial) working version of Mate for fedora. 1) yum install http://dl.dropbox.com/u/49862637/Mate-desktop/fedora_17/mate-desktop-fedora/noarch/mate-desktop-release-17-1.fc17.noarch.rpm 2) yum groupinstall MATE-Desktop Please note this is NOT SUPPORTED CURRENTLY. If you want a truly working version of Gnome 2 use CentOS. However, I must say that it works, and it works great minus 1 error I receive on the login page. Please see the following URL for more information: http://forums.mate-desktop.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=181
Closing as a "NOTABUG". Rest assured it's being looked into.
Thanks for the reply. As I said, I installed mate in June (using the same command that you listed), and it has been working well except for a few minor errors. Mate fills a middle ground between LXDE and gnome3. The kernel in CentOS 6 is older than my laptop, and I'm not sure if it would have supported the hardware as well as Fedora 17. I considered Linux Mint also, but I need to stay relatively compatible with RHEL.
Preaching to the choir, my friend. You may also find the following bug interesting: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=771252 Mate = Gnome 2 fork Cinnamon = Gnome 3