Axios I had (nautilus meltdowns) budgie trust issues for 6 months, I understand you. I used XFCE in a few live iso distros and installed it to hard drive once (MX Linux a couple months): xfce is a nifty DE. you might like it. modest and not flashy like Mate. But modern, unlike Mate.
It was solid but my problem was always the OS's XFCE was on top of like deb flavors with 4 package managers, 3 settings managers, multiple everythings (it seemed like) and overkill like that so it was hard to know how to use it. It's strange it's at Solus. I always thought 'this would be an ok DE if all the crap it was on top of was ripped out of it.' I really cannot think of a better place for xfce to be at right now when I think about. 2 cents
