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?
Pretty sure Cinnamon panels are designed to fit to the width (or height if they’re attached to the side) of the screen and can’t be altered. (The depth/breadth/“thickness” of the panel can be changed, but that’s not particularly relevant here.)
The same may also be true of panel-like features in XFCE and MATE too, but I can’t easily confirm.
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).
