Xmonad is one of the best Tiling window manager out there. Integrating it with Mate Desktop Environment is a wonderful combination
Install any distro with Mate DE, install xmonad and xmonad-contrib packages from the package manager
Create xmonad.hs configuration file in ~/.xmonad folder
use minimal configuration or use my configration from https://github.com/rohithreddy/xmonadconfig
clone and copy this files to ~/.xmonad folder
compile the configuration
$ xmonad --recompile
Create a new entry in Mate's Startup Applications with
xmonad --replace
Log out and log back into Mate