Budgie is absolutely awful

n1980

I know this sounds harsh but bear with me. First off, I think Solus is an excellent distribution, and have been using Solus MATE as my base system for about the last 9 months with almost no problems.

The other day I decided to switch distros and reformat the hard drive on my base system and I tried installing a few linuxes, but they all gave me problems, so I decided to go back to Solus, only this time I went for the Budgie desktop instead of MATE.

It looked good at first - very slick, nice menus, etc, but when I started to use it in anger, (and I'm a heavy user), the problems started to occur. I'm a coder, and I do all my coding and most other work in VMs. Even running 1 Windows 10 VM seemed to slow down the UI drastically compared to MATE, it would regularly freeze for several seconds. Ok I can learn to live with this, but then other things started to bug me too. If I right-clicked an icon in the task bar no menu would show up. Also the start menu does not contain options for locking the screen or suspending - I have to click on an icon in the task bar - this seems completely odd. Not only that, the taskbar icons often just don't respond when I click on them.

In short, Budgie is very unresponsive and slow. It has promise, but there are a LOT of bugs to iron out. I'm about to install Solus 2020 MATE and have no doubt that it will be brilliant, but Budgie is a pain. Please consider making MATE your default desktop until Budgie is production-ready.

WetGeek

n1980 Please consider making MATE your default desktop until Budgie is production-ready.

There is no "default desktop" for Solus. If you want MATE, install the MATE edition. If you're conflating "default" with "most popular," consider that there might be good reason for that.

Bhibb

n1980 That's a very interesting assessment. I've been using Solus Budgie for the past 9 months or so and I've not noticed a laggy UI or problems with clicking on the task bar. There are some things to get used to, like the start menu on the bar itself. I use virtual machines in virt manager on my Budgie set up and haven't noticed issue with it locking up my UI. Perhaps machine specs are to blame for this.

Love the MATE desktop, though, and it's a solid choice, but I'm not seeing the particular performance issues you mention here with the latest Budgie/Solus.

Best of luck in MATE!

DataDrake

I won't deny that Budgie has a few bugs that are annoying, but most of the really bad ones are actually a by-product of budgie-wm using libmutter rather than being a fully fledged WM implementation. We are well aware of these issues and will be correcting many of them in Budgie 11. The rest of it seems to be a workflow issue, and honestly, that's not really we will get right for every user. Nor do we have an interested in cluttering up the UI with multiple ways to do the same thing. Budgie is designed around simplicity, not copying the workflows of every other desktop. If we did, what would be the point in writing it in the first place?

n1980 Please consider making MATE your default desktop until Budgie is production-ready.

No. What we choose to promote as the main edition does not stop you from installing the DE you wish to use.

Renard

n1980 🙂 It sounds as though you are much happier with Solus MATE. My advice to you is to go back to using Solus MATE.

n1980

WetGeek Budgie seems to be the one that's being put forward as the default - it appears first on the download section.

I know it's a newer desktop and not as mature yet, but I think Solus is selling itself short by doing this. IMO MATE is a better choice - Just look at Linux mint. It became the most popular Linux distro largely due to the MATE desktop. It's fast and runs well on reasonable hardware.

It surprised me that Budgie ran so slow because I do have a fairly beefy machine - desktop with 32GB i7 Coffee Lake processor and pretty good graphics card.

n1980

DataDrake Hey, I'm just speaking as a user who just wants to get stuff done ASAP, But it's not my opinion that there are bugs. It's a fact. There's a very clear responsiveness issue with the system tray (or task bar if you prefer) - I right click and left click and nothing happens.

Everything else about Solus is excellent compared to other distros. I love the install process, it's super fast booting, gaming works well, etc.

One suggestion I would make would be to make it easier to switch desktop environments. I tried to do this with my recent Budgie installation, but I had to manually install each package, and there were many, so I just decided to cut my losses and install MATE from the iso, which means I have to go through my setup of network, VMs, etc all over again.

It would be nice if I could install MATE/KDE/GNOME in one click, or package.

FWIW, I've just reinstalled the MATE edition, and intend to continue to use it.

DataDrake

n1980 We are the developers of Budgie, of course it's what we would select as the default experience.

n1980 It surprised me that Budgie ran so slow because I do have a fairly beefy machine

All the power in the world can't make up for a single-threaded window-manager which misbehaves. I've already addressed this. Move on.

DataDrake

n1980 But it's not my opinion that there are bugs. It's a fact.

And that's not what I was responding to with that GIF. I was responding to your very rude statement about how stable Budgie actually is. This particularly pissed me off because the issue you are referring to isn't even Budgie's fault.

Staudey

Well, there are commands to install different DEs. But a clean install is always best.
https://getsol.us/articles/software/desktop-environments/en/

Regarding your main point I agree that there are some rough edges with Budgie, but I wouldn't want to change it for anything else. Have been a Budgie user ever since I first installed Solus and every time I tried a different DE I soon switched back again.

tomocafe

Dunno, I run lots of VMs and containers and Solus Budgie works fine for me (since 2017 or so). I've got it running on 3 computers now. YMMV I suppose.

WetGeek

tomocafe I've got it running on 3 computers now.

Budgie's on 6 out of 7 here. I found that MATE does a better job of streaming video to our TV, but Budgie on our desktops and laptops. It's been that way for a long time.

tomocafe

Another thing, when you come here and tell volunteers working for free for the good of the community that their work is "absolutely awful", you deserve a worse response than you got. If you're a coder, put your money where your mouth is and pitch in.

Justin

After Plasma, Budgie is probably the only DE I'd bother using... 🤷‍♂️

synth-ruiner

I have problems with bugs in Budgie that prevent me from using it, but I would never be rude and nasty to the developers about it - I simply submitted a bug report and moved on with my life. On all my other computers Budgie runs very nicely, and I know that in general my own experience is not going to be the same for everyone - Budgie seems to be almost universally well-liked. It's a great piece of software and everyone who's worked on it deserves massive credit.

You should really be thankful that everyone is being so polite to you here - goes to show how friendly and civil the Solus community is.

brent

synth-ruiner goes to show how friendly and civil the Solus community is.

Being the opposite is way too easy--where's the challenge in that😉?

stylste

Budgie is the strongest motive for the user to try Solus.
Mate on the other hand is the same for Mint as well as Cinnamon.
The fact is that there are bugs everywere in every distro - DE - kernel - you-name-it.
Tell to a parent that their child is ugly and wait for what will happen.
Also make a request ,in the same way, to Mint to change their default to budgie
and inform this forum of their response.
I'll propably eat all my finger nails waiting for that info.

YuriTheHenrique

stylste Budgie is the strongest motive for the user to try Solus

Actually, I started using Solus because of Ikey's reputation(never used his old solus) but after a while budgie became a little more than a chrome-os like interface to a full DE... no problems with it, I'm using it since the release, and have only good thing to say about it.
Bugs, yes, it has, and that's horrible, my wm stops working after exiting some fullscreen games, freezes, and menu sometimes takes a while to open. On kde version this does not happen... BUT, I won't leave budgie, love it 😉
Mate is too "strange" to me, too many options, too many things, too many clutter...

synth-ruiner

I have to laugh every time the "Over Dramatic" tag gets rolled out, by the way. 😂

brent

YuriTheHenrique first install was package Solus-2017.04.18.0-Budgie.iso---never left it either. you get used to things, I guess, so I haven't categorized them as bugs for a long time.

YuriTheHenrique GNOME is too "strange" to me, too many options, too many things, too many clutter...

fixed that for you🙂