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Budgie 10.7 is out now, refreshing many parts of this Linux desktop environment to improve the UI across many parts. Originally created for the Solus Linux distribution, nowadays it lives as an independent project and continues to impress.

There's quite a lot new including an application indexer that should be more reliable, Budgie Desktop Settings has a new design for widget selection and Budge Menu saw quite a few improvements like: gaining support for dual-GPUs to pick the right one, a personal user menu giving you quick access to folders like Home and Documents, quick-access buttons at the bottom things like Desktop Settings and Power and the Budgie Menu also no longer needs to reload when the application index changes.


Budgie 10.7 screenshot - credit to the Budgie devs

Some more of what's new includes:

  • Budgie Run Dialog uses their new application indexer.
  • A new Budgie Screenshot application built into the desktop.
  • Lots of improvements to the notification system, like showing you a summary of notifications after using something in fullscreen. Their notification system also now supports more of the FreeDesktop Notification spec.
  • Raven, their big panel on the right, now has a whole new widget API system so anyone can build their own widgets for Raven. Plus there's upgrades to multiple existing Raven widgets like a new Usage Monitor giving you a minimal look at CPU, RAM and Swap use.

Lots more can be found in the release notes.

I've never actually used Budgie myself, and going by our user stats not a whole lot of people do that filled in their PC Info. If you do use it — what attracts you to it compared with the likes of GNOME, KDE, Xfce and so on?

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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4 comments

WhiteWolf Feb 1, 2023
Budgie is best desktop oriented DE out there if you like something simple without all this crazy customization with KDE gives. Visually it's modest and in good taste just out of box. That's why I use it.
Dan_igrok Feb 1, 2023
I'm still using Solus with Budgie, which is my first Linux system. Back then, seeing pictures and videos about that OS and DE made me want to switch to Linux from Windows 7. It was something that look modern, not too different from Windows, and that wasn't feeling like a bloated mess like Windows. I also liked its dark mode, with a very dark black, instead of the dark grey that most dark modes provide. Since then, I still like Budgie (although I'm thinking about quitting Solus) because of it's simplicity, and still decent customisable options.
STiAT Feb 1, 2023
Gotta' look up if they still depend on ancient gnome depends or if that was done by now (last time I looked was some releases back).

Josh had plans to do so, maybe they got around doing that by now.

I always liked Budgie. I am by now used to my new workflow in Gnome, but I still disagree with a lot of decisions made where you need extensions (as AppIndicator, which breaks every major Gnome release and makes the Desktop crash).

Raven was a blessing in Budgie, and I considered recently if I want to install it next to gnome and give it a shot again.

Only thing is they suffer from the input shortcomings in mutter as much as gnome, which makes KDE the saner choice for gaming. And all the crashes in mutter... if you asked me 15 years ago I'd have said KWin will never become stable, but is by today rock solid.

[edit] yeah, that was done it seems, no dependencies on old gnome libraries that I can see in the meson files. Nice, will certainly install it alongside Gnome now and check if I like it better.


Last edited by STiAT on 2 February 2023 at 5:36 pm UTC
Regis_S Feb 9, 2023
I have used Solus for a while and Budgie was the strongest feature of the distro.
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