In a recent post, Joshua Strobl, a well-known open-source advocate and lead contributor to the Budgie Desktop project, took a deep dive into the achievements of 2024 and highlighted plans for the year ahead. Here are the most important things.
In 2024, the team completed rigorous testing and daily-driver status on Wayland. Though they aimed to deliver Budgie 10.10 by the end of the year, various development challenges prompted them to shift the release date to 2025. Nevertheless, the result of their 2024 efforts speaks volumes:
- Functional Wayland Session: Budgie Desktop can now be launched seamlessly on top of labwc, making it easy for everyday users to log in and start using Wayland without fuss.
- Screen Sharing and Livestreaming: With WLR and GTK xdg-desktop-portals installed, users can easily share screens in their favorite apps or use OBS Studio to live stream.
- Panel and Menu Enhancements: Raven, Budgie Menu, and various popovers work as intended in Wayland sessions. Tasklist grouping is also up and running, ensuring reliable app organization.
- Pending Labwc Bridge: Further integration with Budgie Control Center will enable changes to the compositor’s behavior without breaking a sweat.
According to Strobl, the upcoming year has two main objectives: shipping the long-awaited Budgie 10.10 (the latest version of the desktop environment is Budgie 10.9.2, released in mid-June 2024) and laying the groundwork for Budgie 11.
Despite some remaining to-dos, v10.10 of the desktop environment is planned for release in Q1 2025, providing it meets quality standards. Developers will fine-tune the following areas:
- Applets: Critical elements like the Keyboard Layout and Night Light applets must be refactored for Wayland, ensuring consistent functionality previously available on X11.
- Display Configuration: Budgie Daemon v2 will manage display settings in batches, allowing Budgie Control Center to handle display setups more effectively.
- MenuManager Cleanup: Labwc now handles desktop icons, so plans are in place to deprecate MenuManager where it is no longer needed.
But what’s more important, Budgie 10.10 will be Wayland-only, marking a huge step forward in the desktop’s evolution. Fedora and Ubuntu Budgie are preparing their own processes—whether rawhide branches, COPRs, or PPAs—so interested testers can easily access the new release.
Once 10.10 arrives, it will be the last major release under the Budgie 10 series. The team plans to support it until Budgie 11 becomes mature, but all new developments will eventually shift towards the next generation of Budgie Desktop.
Meanwhile, as a rolling release, Solus (the distribution most commonly associated with the Budgie desktop environment) will introduce v10.10 after preliminary testing to secure a smooth update path for its user base.
Shortly after Budgie 10.10 hits the scene, the team will focus on building Budgie 11 from the ground up. While some of the underlying work—such as Budgie Daemon v2 and overall Wayland enhancements—has already begun, the official Budgie 11 effort encompasses completely reimagining everything from windowing logic to panel design.
Although specific technical details remain under wraps, observers can expect a bold leap in performance, design, and user experience. The choice of toolkit is still a topic of speculation, but rest assured, the developers plan to let the results speak for themselves.
For more information, see the announcement on Buddies of Budgie’s blog.
