Solus Budgie v. Mate

Brucehankins

So I've been experimenting with the different DEs in VMs. No matter what distro it is, I just can't get into a rhythm with standard Gnome. I like the feel of Solus Mate, but it's not as visually appealing. Solus Plasma is borderline overwhelming, but I think that's just how life is with KDE. You can tweak every setting, and even tweak how you tweak those settings.
I know it's a long post, sorry about that. I'm in the process of transitioning my families hardware from W10 to Solus, and it's between Budgie and Mate. Since I don't have much experience with Mate, thought I'd ask this awesome community!

So, looking at just Budgie and Mate, I have a couple of questions for everyone:

Between Budgie and Mate, which is your go-to and why?
If you prefer Mate, how do you set it up so it feels modern and stylish, and not like polished XFCE?
Is there a way to get the power strip in the menu on Budgie similar to how it is in the Brisk Menu on Mate? My research had some stuff from Reddit, but no definite answers.
Have you noticed that one distro (whether on VM or metal) runs better on the current kernel and another runs better on LTS or an alternative kernel on the same hardware?
Is there a way to get the Raven panel on Mate?
What are the best panel applets for Mate? I know Google has tons on this, but I want to know what the Solus users like
Has anyone done a comprehensive benchmark comparison between Budgie and Mate? I know there's some stuff out there by Jason E. On Forbes, but he used Ubuntu 19, not Solus.

Thanks!

WetGeek

Brucehankins it's between Budgie and Mate

I've experimented with Plasma, Budgie and MATE for quite a while now. Currently there are 7 Linux computers in this house ... 6 Budgie and 1 MATE. After experimenting with all the DEs (except gnome, which I know from other distros I wouldn't care for) the one that I liked best all-around was Budgie.

The one exception was the media computer that powers our 4K TV. I found out a while ago that MATE was the best choice for that one. One difference was smoother streaming, and we do a lot of that. A second difference was it's high-DPI setting that makes it easy to use from across the room with BlueTooth mouse and keyboard. With 4K resolution and unmodified output, text is really hard to read from that distance, and lots of icons look like each other. With MATE's high-dpi setting there's no problem at all.

My main workstation is very high-spec with Ryzen 7, 32GB DDR4 RAM, and an external bay where I can hot-swap two 2.5" SSDs. Thus, weekly upgrades are an adventure. On that machine, as powerful as it is, I can detect a distinct sluggishness going from Budgie to Plasma. Back to either MATE or Budgie, and everything speeds back up.

I've had no interest in running any benchmarks since my retirement, because I no longer need to do that. So I can't quote numbers to you, but I'm sure others here can, and probably will. I judge a computer by whether it pleases me and never gets in my way. Budgie and MATE are different. Each one has features I'd like in the other, but either one would suit me just fine if it were the only DE in the world.

just

Brucehankins Try to Install and to use both Budgie and Mate. In two separated partitions. As two independent OSes. Do not mix two or more DEs in a single partition.

Time will show which one is more comfortable to use.

Unneeded DE may be removed later. To free up a disk space.

Smart question

brent

#1--tried both, and gnome. Preferred Budgie: the desktop environment strongly agrees with my sensibilities.

#2-#7-N/A to me. Have read some benchmark studies of Budgie, actually, that were positive, but not S. Budgie vs. S. Mate. I'd bet cash money someone wrote a reddit article about it. I'd be interested in any answers to #3&#6. I find inter-compatibility of DE features--IN PRINT--to be either impossible, possible with mega-code adjustments, or just flat incompatible. Good reading.

WetGeek I judge a computer by whether it pleases me and never gets in my wa

I'm not a real gamer, so this^^^----but I will say hardware a big part of the equation of some of Bruce's questions. I could not get the performance I needed from an old two-core desktop, however. Quad-core with the same mem (16GB) a whole other animal for me.

Brucehankins

WetGeek

brent for reference here are my two set ups

My PC
HP 300-020, ColtP motherboard, Pentium 3558U dual core 1.7ghz, 8gb ram. Runs Budgie well on current kernel, runs Mate well on kernel 5.4. By well I mean understanding the limits of the hardware and having reasonable expectations for it.
Outside of LXDE, XFCE, and a couple Mate distros, everything else just lags to much for me.

The wife's PC
HP 750-630xt, Bara motherboard, Core i7-770k 3.6ghz, 16gb ram, GTX 1060. Has no issue running anything I throw at it. It's about comfort and ease of use with the OS.

We also have a custom built Asus, ASRock, Ryzen machine for gaming, but that won't be getting linux just yet.

brent

Brucehankins By well I mean understanding the limits of the hardware and having reasonable expectations for it.
Outside of LXDE, XFCE, and a couple Mate distros, everything else just lags to much for me.

yeah, that dual core lag is precisely what I meant. my budgie could not sustain (DAILY DIED or FREEZED) 5 open work tabs, crunching pdfs with pdf unite in terminal, another terminal window open MV or CP-ing data, ZOOM or Meets, and a couple more open tasks like using a scanner, or anything streaming--mostly at the same time. No go. This is pedestrian usage to most people but I had to wait til it was affordable to replace. I did recently have an opportunity to upgrade (replace) my system and it's all happy days right now.
And truth be told, I never considered this a budgie shortcoming (nor did you), I considered this hardware and HDD (whole system 2009) way too old to be efficient--in my case.
On the other hand there are plenty of posts I've read at this forum that mention owning a dual core, who do what I described above and more, with no lag and no crashes...newness the factor here I wonder?
edit: past my bedtime! last two sentences did not look like sentences. Probably still dont🙂

kyrios

For the kernel question, my advice is simple: just use the current unless you are facing some issue (i.e: because the computer runs old hardware).

Regarding the DE, at the moment, I still prefer MATE because it works better in a multi user environment (i.e.: switching between user sessions); there was no weather applet in Budgie in 2017 and this was a mandatory requirement for my wife ☀️ . Last but not least, first time I saw Budgie, the look & feel (or rather just the look) reminded my android which I am not a big fan of... but this is very subjective.

Although I run MATE on my computer, I usually do all the Solus packaging & testing on Budgie and I find it very simple, to use, stable and convenient. It never get on the way so we can focus on the task we are doing and this is the most important quality of a DE imho. Both Budgie & MATE are working very well it is mainly a matter of taste and habits. At a time you just have to jump in and use it.

[deleted]

Just go with budgie unless you have some really low spec machine. I've tried budgie on 2gb and 4gb 10year old laptops and seems to me that it works fine. Just disable some animations.