Budgie is a GTK-based desktop environment built on GNOME technologies by the Buddies of Budgie organization, traditionally associated with Solus as its flagship desktop environment. The desktop emphasizes simplicity, minimalism, and elegance, featuring some unique aspects, including a sidebar.
The brand new Budgie Desktop 10.7, released today, offers a sleek and improved user experience that will impress both new and experienced users alike. So without further ado, let’s see what’s new.
Budgie Desktop 10.7: What’s New?
This release includes a slew of styling improvements, as the team has been focused on the small details to improve user experience.
New Application Indexer & Improved Run Dialog
Budgie 10.7 adds a new application indexer that replaces libgnome-menus and unifies logic in both the Budgie Menu and the Budgie Run Dialog. This means that the automatic indexing of the various applications “.dekstop” files in directories intended to store them has significantly improved and is much more reliable now.
Budgie Run Dialog also benefits from improved indexing, providing more consistent search results. Furthermore, it has undergone some visual and functional changes, such as now being displayed at the correct width and adapting to the resolution of the desktop environment. In addition, the label for the app name and description has been split into two labels now.
New Screenshot Tool
Budgie 10.7 features a brand new Budgie Screenshot application, as the desktop environment no longer relies on built-in gnome-screenshot to take screenshots. However, the new tool is nearly identical to the familiar GNOME one in both look and functionality.
Budgie Menu
Budgie Menu, the application with which the user interacts the most often, has gotten significant attention in Budgie 10.7. First, it now uses switcheroo-control, a D-Bus service to check the availability of dual-GPU, to switch between GPU environments when running applications that require it. In other words, users with dual-GPU systems can now launch apps without worrying about which GPU is used.
Moreover, Budgie Menu is much more personalized, allowing users to launch a file manager directly to folders such as Home, Documents, Music, and so on. But wait, that’s not all. Users now have easy buttons for launching Budgie Desktop Settings, Budgie Control Center, and the new Power Dialog in the redesigned bottom strip of the Budgie Menu.
As mentioned, Budgie 10.7 adds a new Power Dialog for typical activities like Shutdown, Reboot, and Suspend, among others.
Notification Improvements
Desktop notifications are an essential part of any desktop environment, and Budgie 10.7 includes several improvements in this area. Here are the more important ones:
- When showing and closing, notifications will now fade in and out.
- Budgie 10.7 stop notification popups from taking over input focus.
- Fixed an issue with notifications causing the screen to flicker in a full-screen app.
- Budgie will now show a notification popup when a window exits fullscreen mode to notify the user that there are notifications that they did not see.
Other Budgie 10.7 Improvements
Raven is the name of Budgie’s special right panel that sets the desktop environment apart from all others. Its purpose is to display various widgets and notifications, providing quick access. Budgie 10.7 introduces a new pluggable Raven widget API framework that enables third-party developers to build their Raven widgets.
On top of that, the sidebar’s widgets can now be positioned as desired, and you can even remove those you don’t want. In addition, some of the main ones have also been improved. For example, the Media Player widget now has a more compact design, while the Calendar allows you to disable day names.
Finally, Budgie 10.7 brings the brand new Usage Monitor widget, which allows users to keep an eye on CPU, RAM, and Swap usage.
You can refer to the Buddies Of Budgie blog announcement for detailed information about all changes.
The main question users are asking is when they will be able to try out all of the new features coming with the Budgie 10.7 desktop environment. As always, users of rolling release Linux distributions, such as Arch Linux, Void, openSUSE Tumbleweed, etc., are expected to get the latest package versions in their repositories first, probably in the next few weeks.
Unfortunately, other users will have to wait for the release of new Budgie-centric spins of some of the more popular Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu Budgie, which will be released in late April, or the new Fedora Budgie spin, which is expected to see the light in May.
