The desktop environment that started as a side project for the Solus Linux distribution but has gone on to become included in many other distros, including Ubuntu Budgie, is out with a new release with new features and improvements.
There is a beginning-of-the-week treat in store for Budgie users. This morning Joshua Strobl, founder and project lead at Buddies of Budgie, the organization behind the popular Linux desktop environment, announced the release of Budgie 10.8 as the successor to version 10.7, which was released seven months ago.
Although Budgie is built using many components of the Gnome desktop, it’s largely considered to be “scratch made” and not a Gnome derivative. It was initially developed to be the default DE for Solus Linux, but soon after its release other distros began offing it as an option. In November 2016, an unofficial Ubuntu remix centered on Budgie was officially recognized as a Ubuntu flavor under the name Ubuntu Budgie.
The project was originally developed in-house at Solus, with development starting in 2013 and its first release being pushed out the door in 2014. Early last year, when Strobl resigned from Solus he took the project with him and established Buddies of Budgie as a new organization for Budgie development.
According to Strobl, “Budgie 10.8 is a brand new release series for Budgie Desktop, featuring improvements to Budgie Menu, adoption of StatusNotifier support in System Tray, Magpie v0.x support, and more!”
What’s New Under the Hood
The list of new stuff in Budgie starts with a new trash applet for quickly accessing, and permanently deleting or restoring items in the trashcan. Strobl said the app isn’t so much “new” as a repositioning of an application that was already available to Budgie users.
“The previously third-party Budgie Trash Applet, developed by Buddies of Budgie team member Evan Maddock, has been merged into mainline Budgie Desktop to become a part of the default applets available to users out-of-the-box,” he said.
In addition, improvements have been made to the desktop’s Privilege Escalation Dialog, the Battery Status Applet, and the Budgie Menu, as well as some refinements to Budgie’s theme.
Deeper in the software there have been improvements affecting how the DE interacts with X11. Specifically, Budgie 10.8 is the first release which includes support for Magpie, which is Budgie’s soft fork of Mutter, GNOME’s window manager and Wayland compositor. A detailed explanation on why Budgie made this move (as well as notes on other changes) is available in Strobl’s post.
For those who want to upgrade to Budgie 10.8, or just take it for a test drive and kick the tires, Budgie’s latest and greatest can be downloaded on GitHub.
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
“which is Solus’s soft fork of Mutter”
It is Buddies of Budgie’s fork. Solus is not involved in Budgie development.
Thanks for the article!
Oops! Thanks for pointing that out, Josh. Fixed.