I have Solus Gnome on a test usb and have taken it for a spin a few times. I know devs will hate hearing this, but I don't know what the difference is re: budgie and gnome. With gnome tweak tools and budgie tools nearly identical, I made gnome look like budgie. my fault. I got my clock/date centered on top, the fonts I liked, my variety wallpaper, my icons, stripped out the dock etc etc but didn't get the gnome experience. I'm usually keen to aesthetic sensibilities but not here. Solus MATE, for instance, is a totally different animal than budgie in feel, look, and ethos. Gnome, not sure.
**but unlike other replies here I noticed NO performance differences. It's attractive. But Budgie still makes me happy.
Solus GNOME vs Budgie.
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In that pool i voted in Budgie as well, i mean, it's cool how Budgie can be a nice and beautiful desktop with a traditional workflow, also making the use of the panel simple, making more easy to me to keep the desktop area more cleaner. I also liked how easy it was to customize, and how cool it was to manage my Spotify music playing from Raven.
Despite of it, i had small problems when changing Budgie to other flows than the traditional. The clock indicator with a side panel used to became really small, and the Raven used to don't feel too nice in these different workflows (Unity like or Mac OS like), sometimes overlapping the panel when opened. In the end, the traditional workflow felt like it was the best option not only because it was familiar, but because it felt more polished. I wonder if GNOME is not a good place to try something different.
Also I'm a Alt+Tab crazy dude. I really like to Play video-games, and change to use Facebook or YouTube a little bit, than come to the game again, and sometimes Budgie would crash making me obligated to reboot. In GNOME, Alt + Tab feels better, and if the Alt + TAB gives me a freezing or a problem, probably i can solve this using the Windows keyboard button to select another window.
That's it, I'm trying out GNOME here, but i really liked Budgie as well. Linux provides so many choices that sometimes i fell like i can got crazy 
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Thats a great question. Bear in mind that, even though people prefer Budgie, GNOME gets more and more appealing due to the circustance the design world is being led to: icons. Not the system icons, but the "less text on screen" type of icon. The dock, the minimal clicks, it all makes sense each year because everything is getting iconized. I've been working in the design industry for a while now, and it's a move even Google got way too late. Gmail is primarily based on icon navigation since mid-2018. Sales companies are designing they own icons, because images sells better. It's an attribute self explained in a glance. We'll probably see more Plank around, trust me!
I use it because Solus = Budgie and Budgie = Solus in my eyes. Even tho Budgie seems to have some problems and shortcomings, it is stable and does its job so far and fits my taste.
Some things I've problems with are the "Start menu" very often it just is slow or does not open at all, depending on what is going on on my PC at that moment. Then it takes like 10+ seconds to open sometimes. Or when it opens I can not type in the search for example. (I've a 2 Monitor setup with nvidia 1080 card). That the multimonitor support is being worked on AFAIK. So, that would be a point that is missing, need taskbar etc. on 2nd monitor.
What I really miss compared to Gnome, is the fact that I could use windows key and on gnome it would give me that overview of all windows on my Desk etc. and the HOT corners is what I really miss, it was very convenient to use.
So the only thing that is annoying and needs some work imho, is the "Start menu" the other things are just what I miss, but I'm good when they never will be part of Budgie.
At the End of the day I still prefer Budgie over Gnome, because I think it is Solus. And it just works so far and never feels slow (except the start menu tho)
Budgie. Because it's much lighter compared to Gnome even though it doesn't have all the bells and whistles.
Plus I like the whole "custom OS from scratch (Solus) with a custom desktop (Budgie) maintained by the same guys who know what they want.
When I first downloaded solus I installed gnome as that's what I use in every distro, Then I was reading everywhere that budgie is the best user experience. I downloaded and installed it this morning, I am in love with it.
This distro hopper has done his last hop. Thank you to the team behind it, Definitely one of the best distros out there.
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I don't want to change my workflow
I don't like dock, fullscreen menu, giant icons, etc
Budgie wins for me 
I prefer Budgie because of the Raven sidebar which is in my opinion a pretty unique experience. It can show me what songs that I'm playing on spotify, I can control the sound devices that I was using. So far, I've been willing to trade the lack of optimization in dock mode and the lack of multi-monitor support just for that sidebar.
Seriously though, why can't the icons of the panel scaled accordingly when we increase the size of the panel? Budgie 10.5 would've been perfect with that little addition. 
Fatih19 They do update, in steps that are scalable. Icon downscaling is pretty poor and you lose a lot of detail even when you're doing bilinear.
JoshStrobl I get that. But isn't the icon theme uses SVG which are vector not raster, so that it's scalable without losing quality?
Fatih19 Icons being vectors is not guaranteed, there are many icon themes which use inkscape or similar, then optipng, as part of their tooling for converting SVGs to PNGs, just makes it easier for them to scale it to a specific size (16x16, 22x22, 24x24, 32x32, 64x64, 96x96, 128x128, 256x256, 512x512 (a rarity though)).
JoshStrobl Well, I mean, if people think it looks worse they can just opt out of using that icons. Or even better, make this a feature a feature that could be turned or off. If people uses that particular kind of icon set they could just make it not scale. Because it really does look weird seeing the icon doesn't scale with the dock.
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I'll be the odd guy.
I love Budgie. But when I tweak it the way I want, it ends up looking a lot like Gnome, except without the automatic workspace additions on the right when I press the windows button.
papakanush with the addition of a cool sidebar.
I landed at Budgie - heard how great Linux was from a friend of the wife, all they would use was Linux Mint it was the greatest experience ever in computing. Got to where I hated Windows anything, since I could not afford to play with Apple.
Tried Mint Cinnamon first then hopped to Mint Mate, then started hopping to anything and everything to find something that just scratched my itch.After bouncing around gaming forums looking for an answer to wanting to game the couple games I liked. I stumbled on a Gaming Forum where a poster mentioned in a very thorough written post about Gaming with Solus and not just any Solus because he tried all 3 DEs at that time but to use Solus Budgie 3.9999 not anything else.
He was very passionate about being clear with the whole 3.9999 and making sure to use Budgie.
I thought to my self ( SELF ) if this guy can get this excited about something that is Total Free plus he is not a ( PAID ) endorsement it must be some what decent. Little did I know why he was that excited over Solus, but I soon found out first hand. I don't use all the extra add ons / I don't use any of the apps, or widgets not sure of name / I use a single bar only across the bottom / when I think of a dock I think of boats no idea what it is for. I am a simple guy with simple modest taste.
Budgie i.e. Solus Budgie just works - it works very well, does everything I need it to.