Has anyone tried Xfce? I've always used this environment, it is the one used by the super lightweight distros, should be the less fancier and thus snappier one.
Not sure why they've blocked their page to Tor tho, had to use a proxy on top to get it.
Xfce is short and snappy, but I would not be opposed to using MATE either, provided that it is packaged by the distro I want to use.
I don't use Linux mint myself, but usually it can be solved by,
1. Disable "trash" or "recycle bin" feature from your file manager.
2. Disable or uninstall application which manage clipboard locally. For example, Xfce comes with application called qlipper.
I don't really like clipboard managers (besides providing the the essential copy/paste support), particularly the clipboard history feature which I never use.
Although I fail to see how the trashcan will pose a problem, because you can avoid having to do that by simply deleting your files with
rm command.