Budgie Desktop 10.10.1 has been released as the first maintenance update in the 10.10 series. The desktop now relies on a new shared static library that centralizes screen and monitor handling logic, adds rate smoothing, and introduces additional safety checks.
Wayland integration also improves through expanded Labwc support. Budgie 10.10.1 introduces full support for sloppy window focus, joining the existing click-to-focus and mouse focus modes.
Just to clarify, sloppy focus allows windows to receive focus when the pointer enters them without automatically raising them, offering a workflow that has long been requested by users coming from other Wayland compositors.
These options are now exposed directly in Budgie Desktop Settings and applied consistently through the Labwc bridge. The developers note that further refinements are planned, particularly around transient dialogs.
Brightness handling has also been reworked, with Budgie no longer relying on GNOME Settings Daemon for display brightness management. Instead, a new budgie-brightness-helper directly controls brightness through the standard /sys/class/backlight interface. The corresponding key bindings have been updated in the default Labwc configuration.
Users who have not customized their configuration can regenerate it automatically, while others can update bindings manually using the new helper commands.
Additionally, version 10.10.1 now respects the preferred background style set via GnomeBG. These styles are mapped to the appropriate swaybg modes and can be adjusted in the Background panel of Budgie Control Center.
Alongside these changes, the release includes a range of bug fixes and smaller improvements. Panels in dock mode now align correctly on the primary monitor, intelligent panel hiding behaves more reliably with maximized windows, and applications launched with elevated privileges inherit the correct Wayland environment variables.
Finally, Budgie can now be launched using greetd (a minimal login manager daemon), copied Labwc configuration files are writable, the bundled libgnome-volume-control has been updated, and translations have been refreshed across the desktop.
For more details, see the announcement.
Unfortunately for Solus users, who are the desktop environment’s primary audience, Budgie 10.10 series isn’t available as an update yet, though it’s expected to arrive soon.
Image credits: Budgie Project
