Re: "the system has a more modern and 'flatter' look"
I went directly for Budgie after trying it on a VM. It has a few flaws like not being able to spawn panels on a second monitor, but I don't really care. The looks is nice, it's very light weight and at the end of the day I do my work on the shell or a browser, what's underneath it is almost irrelevant, I could just start my stuff from a shell for that matter.