Budgie Desktop is a modern, user-friendly desktop environment for Linux operating systems built on GNOME technologies. It is designed to provide a clean, elegant user interface while lightweight and efficient.
Initially developed by the Solus Project, the desktop has gained popularity and has been widely adopted by other Linux distributions. Currently, it is developed by the Buddies of Budgie organization.
Nearly seven months after version 10.7 was released at the beginning of the year, Budgie 10.8 is here, so let’s see what’s changed.
What’s New in Budgie Desktop 10.8
The big novelty in this release is that it is the first which includes support for Magpie (v0.9) – the Budgie-specific window manager. The goal is to provide a stable ABI that delivers X11 support across multiple GNOME Mutter releases until v1.0 is released.
Furthermore, Magpie v1.0 is expected to evolve into a Wayland-only, bringing full Wayland support to Budgie, the goal facing developers for the future Budgie Desktop 11 release.
The privilege escalation dialog has received some valuable enhancements in this release, as it now shows you the PolicyKit’s action description and action ID when graphical privilege escalation is requested.
Budgie 10.8 will also please laptop users because the battery indicator in the Status applet now allows you to control the Performance / Power profile modes. When available on a supported system, you can access several options, including Balanced, Power Saver, and Performance.
The System Tray applet has also received its due attention, as in Budgie 10.8, it has adopted the Status Notifier specification – a modern, vendor-agnostic solution. As a result, Budgie’s System Tray now draws all menus and items visually consistently.
The Trash applet has been integrated into the core Budgie Desktop to become one of the default applets offered to users, providing a convenient way to access quickly and empty the contents of their trashcan and restore files.
Based on user feedback, Budgie 10.8 also changes the organization of some items’ main menu. For example, applications previously classified as “Other” fit better in other categories.
On top of that, the “Utilities” category has been removed entirely, as the applications can now be found in the “System Tools” section.
Refer to the Buddies Of Budgie blog announcement for detailed information about all changes.
Can’t wait to try out the new Budgie 10.8? As always, users of rolling release Linux distributions, such as Arch, Void, openSUSE Tumbleweed, etc., will be among the first to get the updated desktop environment in their distro’s repositories.
