So I've noticed that on my Solus Budgie installation in particular, there are many times when animations are inconsistent. What I mean by this is that when during motion (or tweens) certain menu animations are choppy/not as smooth as they would be on other distributions that I've tested the Budgie desktop environment on. Here's some screenshots for hardware details:

And I'm using the nvidia-glx-driver-current (455.38) as recommended by doflicky, as of this post.

I'll try to be more specific:

  • Windows during resizing tend to lag behind. (I know this is the normal case for heavier programs, but I found it especially prevalent in my scenario; eg. file managers, text editors like gedit, and the more basic system applications, unless they are very lightweight like the software center.).
  • Tween animations are often choppy on system-related applications like the raven panel, and in the software center (the little animation at the beginning). This is more noticable when the window in question is floating over another one.

Now let me explain. These might be somewhat trivial things to complain about, but I'm coming from a Budgie desktop experience on Manjaro, I've never encountered these issues- or at least very rarely. I've installed Budgie-desktop on Manjaro multiple times (twice on the community edition, and 5 times from the architect ISO from "scratch") so I have no reason to believe it was a fluke. Out of the times I've installed Solus, this has been a consistent quirk. And considering that Budgie was created for- and is the flagship of Solus makes this situation a bit confusing for me.
Could this be an Nvidia card thing for this particular distro? I know KDE's Plasma has issues with Nvidia (although Plasma's are much worse). Could this be an issue with a particular background process, perhaps? Does anyone else here have a similar experience? I've had a few other small quirks with Solus, but I'm not going to mention them in this thread.
I'd be happy to do more tests/comparisons for development assistance, and I'm open to giving more details/specifications about my setup. Thanks for reading.

(Btw I LOVE budgie, I'm not trying to flame it)

I also have a gtx-1060, 8GB ram, nvidia drivers (albeit a different repo package) and I don't have this tween thing (rarely) at all in file windows, gedit, apps, etc. or moving/pulling windows.

I offer this contrast as a scientific 'control' as it were, so maybe re-weigh the variables?
In your further testing try out the in-house nouveaus and other nvidia packs. etc.

    6 days later

    brent

    So I've done some testing with some of the nvidia drivers in the official solus repo:
    (by package name)

    • nvidia-beta-driver -455.38 (This was for the LTS kernel, which i tested it with)
    • nvidia-390-glx-driver - 390.132 (LTS)
    • nvidia-390-glx-driver-current - 390.132
    • nvidia-beta-driver-current - 455.38
    • nvidia-glx-driver - 455.38 (LTS)
    • nvidia-glx-driver-current 455.38
    • nvidia-developer-driver-current - 455.38
    • xorg-driver-video-nouveau - 1.0.16

    The nouveau driver that came with the LiveOS by default is certainly the worst, with screen-tearing and very choppy animations- but this should come as a surprise to no one. Tested on current kernel, too.
    All the others perform the same as the normal recommended driver for me.
    I would love to compare it to the running processes in htop from Ubuntu-Budgie (which I've tried) but I've been unable to get the installer to work as of recent, and Manjaro-budgie will not even boot for me at all anymore after installation- architect way and community way- same result.

    Another thing I've noticed is that when running a video on LBRY/odysee, I get a ~ 300ms delay when scrolling.
    When you move your cursor over where the raven panel pops out, does it start to appear choppy for you? Tell me I'm not just going crazy and it's not just all in my head. This issue just really has me puzzled.

        -hyphen Another thing I've noticed is that when running a video on LBRY/odysee, I get a ~ 300ms delay when scrolling.

        This is absolutely abnormal and not something I am getting on my system (as the LBRY maintainer), Raven isn't choppy in my experience but if you have a bunch or notifications that haven't been cleared from it, that could be a problem due to deficiencies in how GTK renders long lists.

        1070ti here.

            -hyphen Something in my reply bothered me so did a neofetch and I have a modest GeForce GT 430--off by a whole digit which is indicative of this year--so my contribution to this thread may be dismissed. But it still stands that when the nouveaus failed me (like they did you), the 390-current package saved my system. graphics outstanding. apples and oranges, I know.
            ---

                JoshStrobl
                brent

                So I have a relative nearby who uses a computer with specs different than mine (AMD FX series CPU, AMD Radeon R7 GPU) which are considerably less powerful than mine. I tested the Live USB Solus OS on that computer, and it had absolutely none of the issues I stated above. I'm pretty convinced this is some weird Nvidia issue on my part.

                Also possibly worth mentioning, I've always used the Download from the getsol.us page, and by the time I have the OS installed, there are like 460 package updates.
                And upon booting the live USB OS half of the time the kernel panics on the first boot, but never on a second one.
                I'm honestly reaching for answers at this point, but I'd love to hear if you'd want some other tests done, JoshStrobl.

                        -hyphen "specs different than mine (AMD FX series CPU, AMD Radeon R7 GPU) which are considerably less powerful than mine. I tested the Live USB Solus OS on that computer, and it had absolutely none of the issues I stated above. I'm pretty convinced this is some weird Nvidia issue on my part"

                        but you never said any of your issues above were in a live iso which may taint your observations maybe, but if you were testing for specific things then of course your observations are valid. Personally I defer. I don't know.

                            brent Ah, let me explain. My issues stated above are post-installation on bare metal, not on the liveOS. (Although they are still present in the liveOS, as it comes with the nouveau driver by default) I simply used the liveOS as a test on another person's computer with an AMD card without having to download/install anything on it.

                              15 days later

                              So I've done some more testing and I have some more info.
                              I've Installed and tried all four official desktop environments of Solus, being KDE Plasma, Mate, Gnome and of course Budgie, and I had an unusual experience with all of them. I've already talked about Budgie in the above posts.
                              In Plasma, the nouveau driver performed by far the best out of all the ones I've tried, the desktop experience was smooth and responsive. Once I installed the official Nvidia driver, there was a noticeable tank in desktop fluidity and responsiveness.
                              Mate and Gnome were each similar to Budgie, however Gnome refused to boot after installing the proprietary nvidia driver.

                              I've played DOOM 2016 on Budgie, and It performs perfectly fine. It's just the desktop performance that's off.