The spit shine to Budgie is more realized than Plasma I think, but...

Not being able to be rid of that bar at the top of the screen was the deal breaker for me. Presumes too much of how I want to organize my workflow and visually was too distracting.

Plasma is maybe less refined (at least with my hit or miss attempts to personalize it), but I think that is mostly not being familiar with it.

Really boils down to what do you want. Do you want seamless integration? Budgie has got it going on. Do you want the ability to make your doodads just so for what ever use case? Plasma removes the guard rails to your ambitions, for better or worse.

MATE absolutely rocks for laptop use. I haven't tried GNOME.

    qsl Not being able to be rid of that bar at the top of the screen was the deal breaker for me. Presumes too much of how I want to organize my workflow and visually was too distracting.

    What bar is this, exactly?

        With the exception of desktop icons - whose implementation might be enough for Josh but isn't for heavy desktop users - Budgie is in a fairly good place. The problem though is budgie on Solus. Budgie is dependent on Gnome and now that it's no longer developed by the same team that maintains Solus there have been a few hiccups. The default theme had to be changed because Plata is no longer maintained, and a week or so ago a few of us Budgie users had problems with dark mode. In that respect KDE's Plasma is superior since it's not dependent on someone else's desktop or theming. That being said I've been a Solus Budgie user for over 3 years now. Budgie is acceptable. I am not in the habit of distro hopping or DE hopping so I stuck with it. But given the fact desktop icon functionality was significantly retarded, and Solus' incredible slow release program that made it suffer from problems with the themes I can't recommend Plasma enough.

        Oh, also KDE is more efficient memory wise than Budgie, if that's of any interest.

          AlucardNoir2 With the exception of desktop icons - whose implementation might be enough for Josh but isn't for heavy desktop users - Budgie is in a fairly good place.

          Gave you a like because now I don't feel crazy---it pi**es off someone else too. Not the Budgie dealbreaker, but having icon-moving freedom taken away still a hard pill to swallow.

          edit: to answer OPs question I prefer Budgie too. KDE nice but I'm allergic to all their packages sometimes.

            EbonJaeger What bar is this, exactly?

            I also want a know about this mysterious bar 🤷

            • qsl replied to this.

                EbonJaeger

                Solarmass

                It has been a minute since I installed Budgie, but my recollection was either the the task or application bar was at the top of the display (or maybe the middle. I forget), and left always on (as all right thinking people should) would just give me a cinematic effect I wasn't looking for.

                Further, when I went hunting around on how to change this, the conclusion was "you want Apple, you got Apple", and really couldn't be changed.

                Contrast this with Plasma where I managed to excise both messing around.

                Took a bit to figure out how to fix that.

                It would be nice if some future rendition includes the best aspects of both (Raven is pretty nice).

                      qsl It has been a minute since I installed Budgie, but my recollection was either the the task or application bar was at the top of the display (or maybe the middle. I forget), and left always on (as all right thinking people should) would just give me a cinematic effect I wasn't looking for.

                      I suspect that it has been more than a minute.

                      Take a look at the Solus download page, which shows the Solus Budgie default:

                      Solus Budgie Default

                      Budgie desktop layouts can be altered by the user, without much difficulty, although not everything can be changed. But the desktop layout is reasonably flexible.

                      Ubuntu Budgie offers eight presets of desktop layouts that offer different arrangements (top, bottom, both, centered, split and so on). I use the "Traditional Budgie" layout, which is more or less identical to the Solus Budgie layout (see below) but lots of other permutations are available if you want to take the time to set them up.

                          To my knowledge the panel has always been able to be moved or at least was in 2017 at the very least when I first used it. You just can not have a panel on anything but your primary display. That feature was held off till Budgie 11 as from memory it requires a significant rework of how it is handled, but I think many things are being reconsidered for Budgie 10 series now. 🤷‍♂️

                          tomscharbach That's specifically with no other applications running or docked.

                          Or I could be horrendously mistaken and should give Budgie another chance.

                          In either case, not being able to arrange icons would also be a no go for me (never got far enough in the process to discover that).

                              qsl It has been a minute since I installed Budgie, but my recollection was either the the task or application bar was at the top of the display

                              Oh! I remember now, many, many years ago the Panel was on top by default.
                              Today the default position is at the bottom. So nice! 🙂

                              • qsl replied to this.

                                  Solarmass It was like last month.

                                  At this point, just assume I am an unreliable narrator or maybe prone to hallucinations 😅

                                  I will say the install was fraught with numerous problems in getting the display to play nice (as documented in my numerous posts here) and WetGeek suggested Plasma might be a better fit.

                                      qsl That's specifically with no other applications running or docked.

                                      I'm not quite sure what you are talking about here, but the taskbar can be set to bottom, top, left, right,icon position on the taskbar is flexible, and the taskbar can be set to autohide or not when applications are open. Budgie is reasonably flexible, although not infinitely so.

                                      qsl Or I could be horrendously mistaken and should give Budgie another chance.

                                      Mistaken or not, why? You seem satisfied with Plasma. If you like Plasma, it probably makes sense to keep using it.

                                      qsl In either case, not being able to arrange icons would also be a no go for me (never got far enough in the process to discover that).

                                      The icons, both pinned apps (in my screens, left on the taskbar) and applets (in my screens, right on the taskbar) can be added, deleted, and arranged.

                                      qsl It was like last month. At this point, just assume I am an unreliable narrator or maybe prone to hallucinations 😅

                                      Were you using Solus Budgie? If so, I'm puzzled because Solus Budgie has been using the layout shown on the download page for several years. Other Budgie implementations use different arrangements. Ubuntu Budgie, for example, defaults to dual top/bottom bars, with center app icons on the bottom bar, unless you change to a different desktop layout in the Welcome Center, as I did.

                                                tomscharbach I believe he meant the un-movable desktop icons (if one were to display them).

                                                Solarmass icons are easily rearrangeable 😉

                                                rearranged into 'hide' or 'show', correct.🙂

                                                      brent I believe he meant the un-movable desktop icons (if one were to display them).

                                                      Okay. I misunderstood him. As to how desktop icons work, I have no idea. As you can see from my screenshot, I don't put anything on the desktop, and haven't in years.

                                                          tomscharbach

                                                          Mistaken or not, why? You seem satisfied with Plasma.

                                                          From even my brief time working with Budgie, it was obvious that it was pretty damn unified in it's approach while Plasma is more throw in everything and the kitchen sink and left you to sort out the details affair.

                                                          That type of unity makes it more intuitive to figure out how things work, especially for a new user, as long as you are in that headspace.

                                                          But if you need this here to work with this while that is going on, Plasma gives you more permutations to play with.

                                                          You just need to figure out how the hell to get there.

                                                              qsl But if you need this here to work with this while that is going on, Plasma gives you more permutations to play with. You just need to figure out how the hell to get there.

                                                              As the download page, tongue in cheek, describes Plasma: "A sophisticated desktop experience for the tinkerers."

                                                              qsl From even my brief time working with Budgie, it was obvious that it was pretty damn unified in it's approach ...

                                                              That, as I understand it, was the design intention.

                                                                  Solarmass They were before Solus moved to a newer version of Nautilus and Josh found a way to nativelly implement desktop icons in Budgie. And by implement I mean they technically exist and you can have then arranged alphabetically on your desktop starting with the upper left corner and star programs by clicking or duble clicking them (man, what functionality!)

                                                                  But rearranging them? I mean, if you think that going into Nautilus, opening the desktop folder and renaming the files there counts as rearrangement, then sure. You can "easily" rearrange the desktop icons.

                                                                      AlucardNoir2 But rearranging them?

                                                                      Oh, I was talking about the icons on the Panel. Yes, you can't rearrange icons on the desktop atm.