Budgie

Budgie is a desktop environment, formerly a project within Solus, becoming independent under the newly formed Buddies of Budgie organization in January 2022. It uses GTK 3 for widgets, and is written in C and Vala. As of Budgie 10, the only available session is on Xorg.

Installation

Install the budgie-desktop package for the latest stable or budgie-desktop-git^AUR for current git master. Installed alongside as runtime dependencies are budgie-screensaver for screen locking support, and budgie-control-center for modification of system settings. The following packages are optional, but add additional functionality to the desktop.

budgie-desktop-view: Official implementation of desktop icons
: Network management from within the panel

Extra applets developed by the Ubuntu Budgie team are available in the package - be warned, however, that this package also modifies existing functionality and could cause issues.

Starting

Choose Budgie Desktop session from a display manager of choice, or modify xinitrc to include Budgie Desktop:

Usage

You can see your notification backlog, set the system and application volume, view a calendar, and see any currently playing videos or music with the "Raven" sidebar. The "Notifications" section can be accessed quickly with or by clicking on the Notifications applet in the panel, and the "Applets" section can be accessed quickly with Super+a. Raven can also be opened by clicking on the "Raven Trigger" applet in the panel, and will be opened to the previously selected pane.

Theming

Budgie uses GTK 3 for its UI elements, and is thus supported by many GTK themes. Budgie also ships a built-in theme that is only applied to its own elements, such as panels and Raven, which can be toggled in Budgie Desktop Settings. Icon themes and cursor themes can be set in Budgie Desktop Settings as well.

Configuration

Configuration of Budgie Desktop is done through the built-in Budgie Desktop Settings application, and changes to system settings are made through budgie-control-center.

Changing button layout

Window button layout can be changed using dconf, or gsettings.

For example:

$ gsettings set com.solus-project.budgie-wm button-layout 'close,minimize,maximize:appmenu'
$ gsettings set com.solus-project.budgie-helper.workarounds fix-button-layout 'close,minimize,maximize:menu'

Use a different window manager

Budgie does not support using a different window manager.

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gollark: The optimal outcome is clearly for us all to laugh at and/or silently judge each other for our perceived misinformedness.