These major changes initially evoked widespread criticism. The MATE desktop environment was forked from the GNOME 2 code-base with the intent of retaining the traditional GNOME 2 interface, whilst keeping compatibility with modern Linux technology, such as GTK 3. The Linux Mint team addressed the issue in another way by developing the "Mint GNOME Shell Extensions" that ran on top of GNOME Shell and allowed it to be used via the traditional desktop metaphor. This eventually led to the creation of the Cinnamon user interface, which was forked from the GNOME 3 codebase. Among those critical of the early releases of GNOME 3 is Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernel. Torvalds abandoned GNOME for a while after the release of GNOME 3.0, saying "The developers have apparently decided that it's 'too complicated' to actually do real work on your desktop, and have decided to make it really annoying to do". Torvalds stated that his objections were universally held by the varied Linux developers he knew. In 2013, Torvalds resumed using GNOME, saying "things had gotten much better in the past year" but noting that "they have extensions now that are still much too hard to find; but with extensions you can make your desktop look almost as good as it used to look two years ago". Torvalds has suggested that the "GNOME Tweak Tool" should be merged into GNOME 3. As of 2015, critical reception has been much more positive. For example, Debian, a Linux distribution that had historically used GNOME 2, switched to Xfce when GNOME 3 was released but readopted GNOME 3 in time for the release of Debian 8 "Jessie". Each of the component software products in the GNOME project has its own version number and release schedule. However, individual module maintainers coordinate their efforts to create a full GNOME stable release on an approximately six-month schedule, alongside its underlying libraries such as GTK and GLib. Some experimental projects are excluded from these releases. GNOME version numbers follow the scheme "v.xx.yy". Here, "v" is a major version, which can include large changes such as ABI breakage; these have no regular schedule and occur in response to requirements for large-scale changes. "xx" is a minor version, released on the above schedule of approximately every 6 months, in which the 1- or 2-digit number's parity indicates the type of release: if "xx" is even (e.g. 3.20) the release is considered stable, whereas if "xx" is odd it represents a current development snapshot (e.g. 3.21) that will eventually evolve into the next stable release. "yy" indicates a point release, e.g. 3.20.6; these are made on a frequency of weeks in order to fix issues, add non-breaking enhancements, etc.  GNOME releases are made to the main FTP server in the form of source code with configure scripts, which are compiled by operating system vendors and integrated with the rest of their systems before distribution.