The Budgie development team has announced the release of Budgie 10.10, an update that marks a historic milestone for this desktop environment. This version not only introduces the official migration from X11 to Wayland, but also signals the end of an era: the 10.x series officially enters maintenance mode after a decade of active development, allowing all resources to be redirected towards creating the next generation, Budgie 11.
Lead developer Josué Strobl has confirmed that the goal of this version is to offer a Wayland experience that is as smooth and familiar as X11, preserving all the iconic elements such as the panel, applets, and Raven notification center.
Transition to Wayland: Integration and Ecosystem
Instead of reinventing components from scratchBudgie 10.10 sIt relies on established tools from the Wayland ecosystem To ensure stability and immediate functionality, wallpaper management is now handled by swaybg, while screenshots use Grim and Slurp. Modern solutions like swayidle and gtklock have been integrated for screen locking and idle management, rendering the old gnome-screensaver fork obsolete.
A crucial aspect of this migration is lat the official recommendation of the composer labwc. The team has developed a "LabWC bridge" that automatically configures this lightweight compositor with default settings optimized for Budgie, including essential keyboard shortcuts, input acceleration, and consistent visual themes. However, thanks to the adoption of standard protocols like wlr-layer-shell, Budgie becomes compositor-agnostic, opening the door to its use with other wlroots-based alternatives.
Desktop and applet improvements
The desktop's visual components have received several improvements in this new version to adapt to the new architecture. main panel (budgie-panel) now uses the layer-shell protocol to anchor itself correctly to the edges of the screen and has improved its dynamic positioning logic.
Los Applets have also improved:
- Task List: It has been completely rewritten, abandoning libwnck in favor of libxfce4windowing. This allows for better support for window grouping and a more modern design with dynamically sized buttons.
- Night Light: It now integrates with GammaStep to control color temperature and reduce eye strain.
- NotificationsThe "Do Not Disturb" functionality is added with a simple middle click on the applet icon.
- AccessibilityThe Budgie Control Center includes new options, such as a working magnifying tool to enlarge areas of the screen.
Furthermore, it is also mentioned that this release includes a new version of Budgie Control Center, which includes several changes:
- It hides the existing color panel, as specifically applied to the X11-era Budgie WM/Magpie.
- It makes the Bluetooth panel optional for distributions that outdate gnome-bluetootholder libraries.
- We recommend that distributions include Bluejay.
- Add visibility controls to multiple panels.
- It introduces Wayland's support for the Multitasking panel.
- Use key files to customize what BCC displays to window managers like Labwc.
- The screen lock settings have been moved to Privacy -> Screen Lock.
- The night light has been moved to its own panel.
- We now support several accessibility options, including a working magnifying glass.
- AppStream metadata was adjusted to improve visibility across multiple software hubs.
The Future: Budgie 11
With the release of version 10.10, The current branch will only receive bug fixes. The Active development is now focused on Budgie 11, An ambitious rewrite that promises to separate the desktop logic from the graphical display layer. This abstraction will allow the environment to be independent of specific toolkits and graphics libraries, guaranteeing its longevity and flexibility in the future Linux landscape.
Budgie 10.10 will be available natively in the upcoming releases of Fedora 44 and Ubuntu Budgie 26.04, gradually reaching the rest of the distribution channels as the packers adopt this new technological base.
Finally, if you are interested in knowing more about it, you can consult the details in the following link