When comparing Gnome 3 vs Budgie, the Slant community recommends Budgie for most people. In the question“What are the best Linux desktop environments?” Budgie is ranked 6th while Gnome 3 is ranked 7th. The most important reason people chose Budgie is:
Budgie is built from scratch to integrate with the Gnome stack, this way hopefully having more stability by utilizing technologies that have a lot of community work already behind them.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Clean UI
Every aspect of GNOME 3 has been crafted to fit together as a harmonious whole, so that it offers a consistent and integrated experience.
Pro Simple and easy to use
GNOME 3 has been designed to make it simple and easy to use. Press a button to view your open windows, launch applications or check if you have new messages.
Pro Does not get in the way
GNOME 3 lets you do the things you want without getting in the way. It won't bother you or badger you with demands, and it has been designed to help you comfortably deal with notifications.
Pro Powerful search
A powerful search feature lets you access all your work from one place.
Pro Highly customisable
Gnome Extensions offers an easy way to extend the built-in functionality.
Pro Great for high dpi displays
Adjustable scaling factor makes it great for high-resolution laptops and far away TVs.
Pro Keyboard friendly
It's (mostly) usable without touching a mouse, so you can keep your hands on the keyboard.
Shortcuts can be defined in the gnome setting.
There are even more shortcuts available when using the gesetting or dconf tool, e.g. switch to desktop 5 to 9.
Pro Easy theming
Changing the look (and feel) of Gnome Shell is easy, shell theme, icon, windows and graphical elements (gtk) individually for each user.
Mostly it's installing some packages or unpacking some archive to a themes folder and using selecting the new theme in e.g. gnome-tweak-tool.
There are a lot of really good themes on DeviantArt.
Pro Adheres to standards
Allowing for interoperability and shared technology for X Window System desktops.
Pro Very productive
With a clean layout and well-thought keyboard shortcuts, Gnome 3 is simply the best for people looking to be productive with their computer.
Pro Online account management
GNOME 3 integrates with your online accounts, so that all your data can be accessed from the same place.
Pro Great task manager
The GNOME Task Manager is great, showing all open processes with every needed detail. For each process you can see the amount of memory and processing power that it's using, along with the process priority.
Pro Wayland support
Gnome is the first desktop environment that uses Wayland as default instead of X server. X server is only optional currently.
Pro Touchscreen friendly
It works well with any touchscreen-enabled system, including newer laptops, even to the point of including a well-designed on-screen keyboard.
Pro Gnome-Tweak-Tool is great
Gnome may seem bland out of the box but, the Gnome-Tweak-Tool is awesome.
The Gnome-Tweak-Tool allows for easy desktop tweaks and other control functionality, and that these features can be activated with just a click.
Pro Integrates with most Google Services
You can use your calendar, drive, contacts and most of Google services with Online Account option. You can show your Google Calendar events on the Gnome's default calendar app, Nautilus (Default file manager of GNOME) almost fully integrated with Google Drive and even you can read your PDF's with Evince (the default built-in PDF reader in GNOME).
Pro It just works
You don't ever "need" tweaks. Unless your device is too outdated, it just works out of the box. Touchscreen, 4k TV, anything just works.
Pro All the major players in the Linux ecosystem have finally collated on Gnome
Red Hat default = Gnome
Fedora default = Gnome
Debian default = Gnome
Ubuntu default = Gnome
Opensuse default = Gnome
This doesn't mean the others go away, it just means there is a colossal community and industry backing behind Gnome.
The point whether or not it being technically the best option is now off table and irrelevant. It is now the de facto standard. Like it or not.
Pro High resultion screens, multi monitor, content creation
If you depend on high resultion screens, multi monitor, or content creation programs you want Gnome.
Pro Built from scratch and integrates into current technolgies
Budgie is built from scratch to integrate with the Gnome stack, this way hopefully having more stability by utilizing technologies that have a lot of community work already behind them.
Pro It's minimal and gorgeous
Pro It's maintained by a dedicated bunch of folks with an eye for detail
Pro Very lightweight
Runs well on low-end hardware and gaming PC’s alike.
Pro Can emulate Gnome 2 desktop look
The Budgie desktop can emulate the classic Gnome 2 look.
Cons
Con Extension system is weakly integrated into the environment
Backward compatibility is not guaranteed and extensions seems like second class citizens in the GNOME environment.
Con Heavy on RAM
It is the DE that needs the biggest amount of RAM.
Con Slow
GNOME 3 desktop environment is kinda slow on some Linux distributions
Con Continuous customization and extension issues
They need to sort out their continuous customization and extension issues, which are why many people still prefer KDE or other Desktop environments.
Con Tightly coupled to its window manager
If you're looking to run an alternative window manager, like XMonad, you're pretty much out of luck.
Con Limited customization
To modify anything beyond the wallpaper requires third-party software.
Con Longtime support is hard since every few years GNOME changes its own standards
Everytime something is complete GNOME breaks itself:
Icon naming changes almost every 3 years : once gtk icons were named stock_edit then gtk-edit then edit-edit and currently edit-edit-symbolic
- App icons change also every few years currently they get renamed to an android like scheme eg: org.gnome.Photos.svg instead of gnome-photos.svg however this breaks all common standards esp. since filenames on linux are case sensitive.
GNOMEShell extension also break on almost every release.
Currently Gtk3 has been stabilized however they are already working on GTK4 and 5 so in the worst case your desktop will need to run and support 4 GTK-toolkits at the same time.
Con Some settings are not where the user would expect it
E.g. it is not possible to change the keyboard auto-repeat delay or rate from the usual All Setting > Keyboard like, for example, in Unity.
Many settings are considered "tweaks" and require installing a separate utility to adjust.
Further still, some settings are buried in a dconf database.
Con Some GUI controls are much larger than on other desktops
This is wasting screen space on non-HiDPI monitors.
Con Depends on systemd
Some people don't like systemd but it is part of most modern distros anyway.
Con Poor 'drag and drop into application' capability
Difficult to drag and drop a file into an open application.
Con Native Gnome dock isn't scalable
The native Gnome dock isn't scalable, which means if you want to change its size you have to download a customized theme for the shell and hope it has the appearance you want. Honestly again just like the icon issue it wastes way too much of the screen on high resolution monitors.
Con Icon scalability and sorting
The icons in the "apps view" area don't have any additional sizes, the current ones are much too large to be effective for the screen space they use. Also, there is no native way to sort them in Gnome, only a very limited extension. Which means you're pretty much always better off using the search bar if you can.
Con Hefty (lots of dependencies)
Gnome 3 in the current state is heavily weighed down by having a lot of functions as requirements, rather than options. You MUST have their email client, calendar, and more installed as the environment relies on them directly for basic functionality. Which is absurd as most other DEs don't require a specific calendar program just to tell you what day it is.
Con Gnome search indexer (tracker) consumes your CPU even on battery
If you have large home directory with lots of file, Gnome search indexer Tracker tries to index all the files and it takes forever to complete. During indexing, it uses all you CPU and if you are on battery it will drain you battery instantly.
Con Extensions can break whole Gnome desktop
Gnome extensions have a lot of freedom to customize the desktop, and it means, that extensions can break your desktop leaving you unable to yous your computer. Also extensions can significantly slow down whole desktop.
Con Rather insane method of wallpaper slideshows
Most DEs and WMs allow the user to simply point to a directory, and use pictures from there. Gnome 3 requires the rather asinine idea of building an XML file to accomplish the same thing.
Con Non-intuitive use paradigm
It doesn't feature an always-on dock and fixed amount of usable desktops, doesn't support tray icons for background programs. The main interaction with running programs bases on clicking and dragging (to a desktop) preview thumbnails.
Con Inconsistent desktop
As of GNOME3, some applications have ClientSideDecorations while other use normal Titlebars, this also affects usablity since both Decorations do different things if you left, right, or double click it. Same goes for Menubars. Some Apps follow the GlobalMenu in the GNOMEShell while others don't.
Con Less light weight than you would expect
Budgie has a nice and simple style, but the memory usage is quite high after booting. Thankfully, the lead developer is working to remedy this.
Con Sometimes buggy
Budgie can sometimes be buggy.
Con Does not properly support multi monitor
Having two monitors works, but it's not perfect.
Con Still in development
Budgie is still young and in active development, so it may not be as stable as many other desktop environments.
Con Issues with proprietary drivers and Mutter
Mutter causes issues with screen tearing and microstuttering in most applications especially with NVidia GPUs.
Con Not a desktop environment
It's just a replacement for the GNOME-shell and you still need a GNOME-desktop installed at the same time.
Con Very hard to install
Installing in distros that are not ubuntu based can be hard.