Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS (Focal Fossa), with MATE DE. GNOME folders keep re-appearing in MATE DE environment, even after uninstalling GNOME

Question

(Someone has tried to mark this as a duplicate. However, my question is not just on how to uninstall gnome (I've already used the given link to uninstall & it didn't work). I mainly want to know what is the reason behind the GNOME folders getting created & how to avoid it. It could not be because I've installed without noticing, while doing sudo apt-get update, because just before writing this question I uninstalled gnome-shell by following multiple sources, including the one that this question is considered a duplicate of).

Note: Please let me know if the screenshots are not easy to read. Will update them with new ones.

I’m using Ubuntu Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS (Focal Fossa), with MATE DE.

My laptop suddenly started heating-up (it’s Dell XPS 15z, so I have to add - more than usual) & very slow. So, I installed tlp as suggested in ubuntu-18-04-lts-heating-issue

And, while trying some more troubleshooting steps, I found some of the folders named “gnome”. I switched to MATE from GNOME for the very same reasons: same heating & system slow. My system has only 4 GB RAM, which seems to be not enough for GNOME. But I’m seeing some gnome folders present even after I removed everthing on GNOME. They are getting created again, even when I uninstalled gnome-shell.

I’ve read that MATE is an extension of the GNOME project. So, are these folders created because of that. Or, did I install these packages unknowingly; if so, why did they appear again, even when I uninstalled the gnome-shell completely now.

So, 2 questions:

1. Why do gnome folders keep getting created in MATE DE?
2. And, does (could) it have anything to do with the heating issue? If so, how to remove GNOME completely & prevent it from getting installed again?
3. I read that some gnome packages work fine with MATE, like, the Take Screenshot package, that I just realized that I have been using a lot – even after uninstalling GNOME completely. Can I keep using some GNOME packages like this, without re-creating the heating issue?

This is my memory config:

Video Card info:

Details of NVIDIA card:

Details of (in-built) Intel Graphics Card (i915):

Currently used VGA Kernel Driver:

Graphic Cards Hardware Info:

mate-system-monitor (sorted on CPU%):

mate-system-monitor (sorted on Memory%):

htop (Vivaldi):

htop (Vivaldi):

Answer 1

To slightly rephrase and answer your questions:

Where do operating system directories with gnome in their name come from?
Answer this question by asking dpkg..for example:

dpkg -S /etc/gnome

This may give a list of packages. For a more specific answer, run this for specific files in the directories.

Can these cause your computer to heat up?
Only if they are running! Check with ps to see if they are. Sorting by cpu in top or system monitor may also be informative. Considering you only have 4G, sorting by memory use may also help. If you find running gnome components you are not using, you can just kill them, or you can dig deeper and prevent them from auto starting, see How do I manage applications on startup in GNOME 3? but also check the MATE autostart methods, as it shares some with gnome. Switching between MATE and Gnome may leave services from both auto starting when you log in.

Can you mix gnome applications with MATE?
Mostly -- the package manager will install gnome dependencies those tools need, but there may be gnome services that are also needed, so if you disable those in the above step, some of the applications may not have full functionality.

Looking at your screen shots, I am reminded that your web browser may actually use more memory and cpu than gnome, so addressing this may help. Hibernate or close any browser tabs you are not using. Check vivaldi's internal task manager to see if there's an especially greedy tab or extension. See https://vivaldi.com/blog/improve-performance-in-vivaldi/ for deeper coverage of this.