i tried out plasma on opensuse (in a vm) and liked how they handle panels, i especially liked how i could set the bar to be only as wide as the content inside it.
does anyone know if this is possible in mint?
You may be looking for a “dock” instead of a “panel”.
Plank is a popular/common one, I do not have any recommendations for you though
i tried it but it was kinda janky for some reason, maybe i just don’t know how to properly config it
Plank is quite buggy, it’s not your idea. If you want to use Mint, use its cinnamon panel, not a dock. In fact, I filed a feature request a few weeks ago with Mint, to make the panel auto-resize to look like a dock, and there wasn’t a peep about it by the devs. So if you want a dock that’s less buggy, your best bet is Gnome with the Dash2Dock or “Dash2Dock Animated” extensions (the first one is less buggy).