For me it’s Gnome. I do like Budgie and Cinnamon and Xfce and others but Kde is my go to. Not because it’s more customizable. That’s not the reason! The reason is because it works so well it’s almost impossible to use anything else. I use btrfs and I’ve never had an issue. Trust me i have written to these m.2 drives over and over and over and hard shutdowns and restarts and not had any failures. It works so fast, so smooth and no issues with updates. I’m not one to mess with settings much or permissions etc. I install what i want and use it. Nothing special. I just want it to work flawlessly and it does.
agreed on all. works, no fuss, no hiccups, functions on the hardware, then dial it in, and productive–that’s probably what makes or breaks a DE for a user.
also agree: Gnome. (hope they aren’t reading:)
Moved back to Budgie from Plasma. Little smoother, little less annoying and for some reason bluetooth seems more stable. I know that doesn’t make sense but that is my perception.
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Works great for my use case, I have used Gnome, KDE, Cinnamon, XFCE and out of them all Budgie worked the best for me. I do not see my self switching anytime soon. 
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I have EOS on two laptops, one is a Dell creator category build which I chose to use KDE Plasma. I like being able to tweak the looks and move elements around, I use shortcuts a lot but do shy away from “window manager” type DEs. The one thing I hated about KDE is the Dolphin root access controversy. I think they finally came to some reasonable sense with the recent “admin:///” (same as gnome nautilus) addition. I have a “places” shortcut for that feature. Laptop has an Nvidia card and EOS install worked beautifully powering it up. The second laptop is a little older intel graphics only HP, still a real workhorse. Used Budgie once years ago and was not turned off but not impressed exactly. Last week I installed EOS Budgie with magpie, now I’m impressed. Really like it is straight forward, install what I want, no fuss on the GUI like I do with KDE. Like it better than gnome. Many say gnome just “stays out of the way” and that is good it works for them in that manner. Every time I turned around gnome was in my way. Extensions are a must have for me but not too many. So I left gnome, I would take Budgie any day of the week. That is one (1) reason Linux is so Awesome you have options, the choice is yours and what works best with your habits, likes and dislikes. I have to say EOS has the best implementation of the DEs I have tried. KUDOS to EOS! Linux is Awesome too!
I was DE hopping, When I tried Solus OS for the first time. Damn, I started to like the Budgie desktop and in 2021, when I was looking for an Ubuntu distribution, I learned about Ubuntu Budgie. It was a great, underappreciated edition of Ubuntu that is too good for novices. I remained faithful to Ubuntu-Budgie for about a year.
After ubuntu-snap drama, i have left the ubuntu. Budgie was the one damn desktop, that stopped my DE hopping, it is too simple and modern.
The main reason I’m still using Budgie is because it boosts my productivity and helps me overcome my adhd. Thank you @JoshStrobl for your creation.
I have budgie installed all of my three laptops
Ultramarine linux (fedora) - for privacy oriented purposes
Endeavour-Budgie on my Main system.
solus os - in family laptop
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I could of wrote this all ^^ but I was never a Deb guy. Everything else yes. After Solus Budgie that was it. Now Endeavour budgie. Those two is it.
I think Endeavour budgie is the closest things to Solus budgie and that is what brought me to Arch.
I don’t think every distro does it justice but only replied to say Budgie, like Solus, was technically birthed by Ikey. It didn’t really take off until Josh nurtured it, advanced it, and and made it a DE picked up by all major Linux players. Josh does deserve all the credit for it’s functionality and popularity–and tireless work on the project.
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I agree with everything in your post.
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Ikey is a visionary genius and I was lucky enough to cross paths (as a user) since his early work and my entry into linux. Listen to him talk or his interviews. I wish Serpent would get off the ground. Life always seems to get in Ikey’s way…now that he’s partnered back up with Josh to recreate Solus (and by extension, build a viable Serpent) under the hood (packaging, tools, language, etc) all I can say is these are exciting times. Josh without doubt is the driving force and his own visionary genius–Josh is also an innovator and knows how to monetize projects, and he is driven. I’m not even sure he sleeps. Solus never had a committee or a board for anything. It was always the Luck of the Irish type thing for better or worse with a global ragtag dedicated crew like most distros.
There’s some romance and seduction to all that but it hasn’t always spelled stability and sometimes one just needs stability. Endeavour does that.
Was using Budgie, until small things started not working. Since I’m not savvy enough to correct, I started distro hopping again. About a half dozen installs in 2 days. Returned to EOS but with Cinnamon. Perhaps because of the way I set my desktop up, I frankly don’t see much, if any difference. Both work to my liking. That said, I saw there is a new release from Buddies of Budgie (RSS feed). Tempted to switch Desktops on my laptop. Laptop could be Budgie, while my Desktop would be Cinnamon.
Yes, I do know the story and have followed Ikey with Solus and Josh from the early days. Eventually i got here after Antergos. Did a little Manjaro, installed Arch and here we are. I’m no expert but i have tried most linux distros over a period of years.