We are pleased to announce the release of the next version of our distro, 21.10.
This is a regular release supported for 9 months. For those looking for a longer term support release we recommend our 20.04 LTS version which is supported for 3 years.
Key highlights:
Release of our second Raspberry Pi image.
brand new budgie-desktop version – do lookout for our optional Windows 11 layout
Our Window Shuffler now automoves and auto-arranges windows across multimonitors and workspaces
Lookout for our Window Shuffler budgie applet
Brand new applet – budgie-cputemp-applet
A mass of new capabilities, changes and fixes throughout our budgie-applets
GNOME 40 & GNOME 41 applications
We also inherit hundreds of stability, bug-fixes and optimizations made to the underlying Ubuntu repositories. Many thanks to all the volunteers, Debian & Ubuntu maintainers and Canonical employees who have done such a sterling job packaging the changes that many more developers from all over the world have resolved.
This is the power of FOSS that we are all proud to be part of.
Download links and installation guide are provided. As always – do check the md256sum hash value of the downloaded ISO – this really does help you get a flying start for your install.
Remember, upgrades to the latest version of Ubuntu are entirely free of charge.
We recommend that all users read the the Ubuntu 21.10 Release Notes, which document caveats and workarounds for known issues affecting all flavours including Ubuntu Budgie.
Thanks must go to all of the Ubuntu Budgie team who have contributed to this release in one way or another, from development, testing, website infrastructure, support to the community and advocating to all. Also cheers to all of you discourse members who has helped others to resolve issues contributed to various posts & threads.
Ubuntu Budgie 21.10 is a normal release that will be supported for 9 months until Jul 2022. Long Term Releases such as 20.04.3 provide assured stability over a longer term (3 yrs) than a standard 9 month release. Critical and stability fixes will be released for all the supported Ubuntu Budgie components; these will be undertaken by ourselves, Canonical and the wider Ubuntu community.
Ubuntu Budgie is the sum of many hundreds of developers working together. For 21.10 your Ubuntu Budgie team have primarily concentrated on our window managment system called Shuffler and we are very excited to share the great new features
For 21.10 we now have also produced our second Raspberry Pi 4 image – this has continued to be refined. Do checkout the README – the optional optimisations really make a difference with a 8Gb Raspi model.
Budgie Desktop has now been uplifted to v10.5.3. We are pleased as a team to have contributed to this release – the results from the whole budgie developer community really shows in 21.10
… and for fun we now include a Windows 11 like optional layout.
Image 1632331337435
Our desktop has been refreshed – we now sport a revamped dark theme with GTK+4 support.
Windows Shuffler now auto-moves and arranges windows
Taken together, all the smaller changes plus the larger enhancements shapes our distro to be fully flexible and customisable to your workflow; with sane defaults to provide a first rate experience from the get-go.
Shuffler Window rules now allow you to open application windows on specific workspaces
Rules
Applications Menu – Calculator now shows a visual hint how to copy the result to the clipboard. Try it – press Super then enter 2+2
Applications Menu – transition from Grid to List modes is now a fade rather than a slide animation
We no longer install the elementary gsettings schema – this ensures we don’t clash with a pantheon install. The elementary schema entry is now found in the budgie applications schema.
Some themes space the category list oddly. We now have a user configurable override (adjust category spacing) in the applet settings allowing you to control the spacing.
Fix where after connecting to a VPN spinner cursor was still showing
Budgie Calendar Applet changes: Handle correctly the display of AM/PM when using custom date formats. Also backported to 20.04/20.10
Budgie Calendar Applet changes: Select the current date when opening the popover. Also backported to 20.04/20.10
Budgie Calendar Applet changes: How & Hide current week option. Also backported to 20.04/20.10
v0.7.0 of budgie-indicator-applet has been released. This has a fix (hopefully) for any appindicator that used to display big/huge icons
New applet called CPU Temp that displays the temperature of various sensors. It has been backported to 20.04, 20.10 & 21.04 as well.
Thanks to contributor Akira (https://github.com/AkiraMiyakoda) budgie-pixel-saver-applet has now received a number of enhancements:
Drag – drop to unmaximise
Configurable title theming
Updates to ensure work with arc-theme
Increase configurable title width to 200px
Allow right alignment of title
revamped theming support for window controls
new style class "pixelsaver" to aid theme maintainers
These changes are now available in 20.04/21.04 & 21.10
VisualSpace – we now display a hint when you open the popover – scrolling over the panel icon changes the workspace.
Brightness Controller has now been reworked to use GNOMEs dbus control … so this should be all distro friendly and will reflect accurately the same Power slider in GNOME Settings.
Budgie Desktop
Budgie 10.5.3 is a minor release that introduces fixes for bugs, various quality-of-life improvements, and support for the GNOME 40 stack.
Bug Fixes and Cleanup
Budgie 10.5.3 introduces fixes to Budgie panel applets, Raven, and various window state tracking.
Drop use of Queue and Cancellable in Raven’s NotificationView.
Instead of using a Queue (which is not thread safe anyways), just update a reference to a NotificationWindow since we only really cared about the head of the Queue to begin with.
Dropped Cancellable usage for async pixbuf scaling. There has not really been a scenario yet where we have not been able to scale an icon within the amount of time before a NotificationWindow is removed.
Fix application icons not scaling in Raven’s Notification Group headers.
Fix issue with VirtualBox icon not being displayed in IconTaskList applet
Fix regression in Budgie Desktop Settings icon handling.
MPRIS metadata, playback status, and CanGoPrevious / CanGoNext fetching is now performed immediately rather than being an unnecessary idle operation.
Notifications now use a high priority timeout.
Notification iconography now uses a consistent IconSize.DIALOG instead of IconSize.INVALID and only scales if the icon provided is not already the desired height.
Prevent Budgie Desktop Settings from being pinned via drag-and-drop, fixing an issue where Budgie Desktop Settings was inadvertently pinnable and unable to be unpinned.
Sound Indicator applet and Raven
Use standard mute/unmute methods, fixing issues like muting with media keys and then trying to unmute via the applet, which would previously not work.
System Tray applet
Fix issue with KeePass causing panel segfaults.
Various stability improvements, such as more proactive X11 error trapping.
GNOME 40 Support
Budgie 10.5.3 introduces support for the GNOME 40 stack. GNOME 40 introduced various changes in Mutter, gsettings-desktop-schemas, and gnome-shell which impacted the ability to use Budgie under a GNOME 40 stack or in conjunction with GDM (GNOME’s login manager which leverages gnome-shell).
When compiled alongside GNOME Settings Daemon 40.x, Budgie will use the migrated font anti-aliasing and hinting options, which were moved from org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xsettings to org.gnome.desktop.interface . In GNOME Shell and GNOME Settings Daemon 40, there were changes introduced which impacted Budgie’s ability to use dedicated screensavers, such as gnome-screensaver (which we have been using since 2017). As always, we encourage that Budgie be used with lightdm and an optional greeter such as slick-greeter, as opposed to being installed alongside GDM and GNOME Shell where locking the screen is very hit-and-miss.
Quality-of-life Improvements
Here are some quality-of-life improvements shipping in Budgie 10.5.3
Filter out audacious notifications so they do not clutter up Raven.
Hide “Default”, which is typically Adwaita / GTK’s internal theme. We continue to encourage the use of theming that officially supports Budgie, such as Materia and Plata.
Mutter and WM preference schema settings are now only applied for Budgie session.
Spacing is now configurable in the Status applet.
The application fullscreen state tracking has been slightly rewritten to use the window XIDs, only call our track window state function on specific flags in the changed or current state, and reducing instances where some unset flags would not result in the application being removed as a fullscreen application.
There is now an option in Budgie and exposed via Budgie Desktop Settings’ “Windows” section to automatically pause notifications when a window is fullscreen and unpause when there no longer is a fullscreen window. This is useful in reducing distractions when gaming or watching content!
To improve the default user experience of Budgie on some downstream operating systems such as Arch Linux, Budgie now ships with a default wallpaper, eliminating the need for downstreams to apply supplemental changes or ship a wallpaper package.
We will no longer filter device added / removed notifications. This resolves issues where ejection notifications for external media would not get stored in Raven’s Notifications section.
When xdotool is available on the operating system, the Lock Keys applet can be clicked to toggle CapsLock and NumLock!
Raspberry Pi
Changes for 21.10:
Added support for the Compute Module 4 board
Add --force-arm-mode command line option
Add --force-findpi-mode command line option
Add --force-model modelname command line option
Add --model modelname —cpuinfo “CPU String to Match”
Disable buttons and provide hint on Display tab if pibootctl is not found
Disable buttons and provide hint on Overclock tab if no ‘/boot/firmware/config.txt’
Enhanced the various option discoverability by using mouse hover and displaying a hint in a ‘status area’
Themes
Snaps have been produced for QogirBudgie and Pocillo GTK Themes – this means you can now theme snaps that are themable
GTK+4 compatible version of WhiteSur available in Makeovers – backported to 20.04/20.10 & 21.04. Available to install on 21.10
GTK+4 compatible version of QogirBudgie available in Makeovers
GTK+4 compatible version of Vimix Theme available in Makeovers – backported to 21.04 and available to install on 21.10
GTK+4 compatible version of Mojave Theme available in Makeovers – backported to 21.04 and available to install on 21.10
GTK+4 compatible version of Pocillo Theme available
Updated our default Pocillo icon theme with lots of new icons
Updated Whitesur icon theme with lots of new icons
Welcome snap no longer is updated from end-of-support 18.04. A message is now displayed when running on 16.04/18.04 & unrecognised distros
Welcome has now been uplifted to core20 (focal) which ensures long-term compatibility with future Ubuntu Budgie versions – this ends all support for 16.04/18.04 (32bit) since it cannot be installed on these legacy versions.
Additional
A couple of fixes to budgie-desktop-environment has been made to make budgie more friendly to other desktop environments / remote access that use dash as the default shell.
Nemo Previews now available as a recommended app in Budgie Welcome to allow you to visualise the content of a highlighted file. Just press Space to toggle the viewer in Nemo. Backported to 20.04 & 20.10 as well.
IRC links in Budgie Welcome now point to Libera Chat since the Ubuntu family has ended its association with Freenode.
We have uploaded v0.8.3 of the Drawing application.
The UB teams 21.10 wallpapers are now on the daily ISO. Eclectic as always… enjoy!
Image 1632332224893
Right click on a picture via Nemo has a "Set as wallpaper" menu option. This now has a fix to set both the desktop wallpaper and the lock-screen wallpaper at the same time. Previously only the desktop wallpaper was updated.
GNOME 40 and later utilises the same super alt left/right keys combination to change workspaces that we also need for Shuffler to shift windows. For Ubuntu Budgie we use a gsetting override to revert to keybindings to that as used prior to GNOME 40.
Areas to look out for
Kernel 5.13 is now the default in impish. Do look out for this – remember its the key part of any linux distro so issues need to be reported … not worked around! https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux
Note – from 22.04 Canonical & Mozilla will be enforcing all flavours to swap to using the snap version of Firefox. For 21.10 we will default to the usual Debian package install. We do encourage all 21.10 users to start using the snap version now and feedback your finding back to Canonical so that 22.04 will be as problem free as possible. Don’t forget you can Pocillo & QogirBudgie theme all compatible snaps as well.
KEY FEATURES AVAILABLE TO UB FROM UBUNTU
Linux kernel v5.13
GNOME 40 applications and some GNOME 41 applications
Latest version of LibreOffice 7.2
What does all that mean – most cutting edge yet stable software that brings great benefits for brand new hardware compatibility – including support for the very latest games.
UB MAINTAINED PACKAGES
Apart from the above (!) UB maintains many Debian packages. New versions available in 21.10 include:
Arc Theme
Rhythmbox Alternative Toolbar
KNOWN ISSUES
If you find that after the upgrade clicking the menu button crashes the panel, then CTRL+ALT+T to open a terminal then run:
Please read the Ubuntu Release notes which covers issues common to all Ubuntu Flavors.
The raspi image with some types of HDMI monitors hangs on boot. Please note the detail in the Download README link and how to change to fkms to enable booting.
HOW TO UPGRADE FROM 20.04.3 TO 21.10
Basically you don’t. You should upgrade to 20.10 first, then to 21.04 before then upgrading to 21.10
HOW TO UPGRADE FROM 21.04 TO 21.10
IMPORTANT: remember to double-check you have the following vital package before you upgrade:
sudo apt install ubuntu-budgie-desktop
A few days/week or two after the formal release of 21.10 in Oct you will be automatically offered a graphical prompt to upgrade.
Alternatively, from a command line run:
update-manager
Some of the packages that were installed as part of the Ubuntu Budgie backports PPA (ppa:ubuntubudgie/backports) will be uninstalled as part of the upgrade. Use budgie-welcome to reinstall anything that is removed.
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We are pleased to announce the release of the next version of our distro, the third 20.04 LTS point release.
The LTS version is supported for 3 years while the regular releases are supported for 9 months.
The new release rolls-up various fixes and optimizations that have been released since the 20.04.2 release in Februrary:
The kernel found in 21.04 has been backported to 20.04.3. This is part of the Hardware-Enablement-Stack release. 20.04(.1/2) users are automatically upgraded to the HWE (see later).
Budgie Welcome updates include lots more translation updates together with updates for the new packages described below
Backports PPA updates to
whitesur-gtk-theme,
whitesur-icon-theme,
vimix-gtk-theme,
budgie-calendar-applet
budgie-clipboard-applet
budgie-pixel-saver-applet
Brand new applets:
budgie-cputemp-applet
budgie-performance-gauge-applet
Brand new nemo plugin:
nemo-preview
We also inherits hundreds of stability, bug-fixes and optimizations made to the underlying Ubuntu repositories. Many thanks to all the volunteers, Debian & Ubuntu maintainers and Canonical employees who have done such a sterling job packaging the changes that many more developers from all over the world have resolved. The power of FOSS that we are all proud to be part of.
Download links and installation guide are provided. As always – do check the md256sum hash value of the downloaded ISO – this really does help you get on with a flying start for your install.
Remember, upgrades to the latest version of Ubuntu are entirely free of charge.
We recommend that all users read the the Ubuntu 20.04.3 Release Notes, which document caveats and workarounds for known issues affecting all flavours including Ubuntu Budgie.
HWE
The Ubuntu LTS enablement (also called HWE or Hardware Enablement) stack provides newer kernel support for existing Ubuntu LTS releases. This enablement stack will be installed automatically as part of your regular updates if you first installed from 20.04.1 or 20.04.2.
We are pleased to announce the release of the next version of our distro, 21.04.
This is a regular release supported for 9 months. For those looking for a longer term support release we recommend our 20.04 LTS version which is supported for 3 years.
Key highlights:
Release of our first Raspberry Pi image. Thanks to new team member Sam, we are very proud of the work done and the positive feedback received from all beta testers. Release Notes
A huge 21.04 regular release.
brand new budgie-desktop version
Layouts capability of our Window Shuffler
Refinements of our own unique WIndow Tiling capability – we have also received feedback that this works on Mate, GNOME Shell (Xorg), XFCE. So do give ‘Window Shuffler’ a try on your desktop.
Brand new Mojave makeover in Budgie Themes & Layouts
Brand new WhiteSur makeover in Budgie Themes & Layouts
Brand new applets:
budgie-clipboard-applet
budgie-analogue-applet
We also inherit hundreds of stability, bug-fixes and optimizations made to the underlying Ubuntu repositories. Many thanks to all the volunteers, Debian & Ubuntu maintainers and Canonical employees who have done such a sterling job packaging the changes that many more developers from all over the world have resolved.
This is the power of FOSS that we are all proud to be part of.
Download links and installation guide are provided. As always – do check the md256sum hash value of the downloaded ISO – this really does help you get a flying start for your install.
Remember, upgrades to the latest version of Ubuntu are entirely free of charge.
We recommend that all users read the the Ubuntu 21.04 Release Notes, which document caveats and workarounds for known issues affecting all flavours including Ubuntu Budgie.
As part of our commitment to be transparent with the community, the team is pleased to present a short statement of our financial position covering 2020 to 2021.
History
Budgie Remix had launched in April 2016
In Nov 2016 Ubuntu Budgie was granted the status as an official community flavour with Ubuntu/Canonical.
17.04 was our first release official release as a flavour.
18.04 was our first Long Term Schedule release
20.04 is our second Long Term Schedule release
Goals
As we close off our fiscal year for 2021 (Apr 2020 – Mar 31, 2021), the financial position of the project is very healthy. We have met several goals this year and including our stretch goal:
LTS Fiscal Goal – ensure that the costs to support a three-year LTS were in place.
Stretch Goal – ensure we have reserves to meet five years of costs (2020 – 2024).
Operating Costs
Infrastructure costs relating to the website, test build servers, domain registrations
Reserves are in place as a contingency to account for unexpected expenses.
For 2020-2021 we did have a handful of Patreon donors. Please do consider becoming a Patreon since this gives Ubuntu Budgie a regular income.
PayPal
We have had many individuals who donate via Paypal, and we thank you all!
Sponsorship
Digital Ocean
We have had a significant vote of confidence by DigitalOcean paying for all of our 2017-2020 hosting and infrastructure fees and we hope to continue our partnership through the next fiscal year as well. https://www.digitalocean.com
Discourse
Our community support is via a hosted discourse forum which was generously provided through sponsorship as well. https://www.discourse.org/
Status.io
While this is yet to be implemented on our part, Status.io has provided a sponsorship that will help us keep our community up to date with system interruptions in our infrastructure. https://status.io
SerpAPI.com
SerpAPI has invested a substantial contribution in Ubuntu Budgie. We are very grateful for their generosity and their commitment to opensource projects such as our own.
https://serpapi.com/
Future Goals
Through your contributions we have purchased development laptop which has proven invaluable to support development and support across all our supported platforms – 18.04, 19.04, 20.04, 20.10 and developing 21.04. We’ll be looking closely this year towards multimonitor development.
We have also purchased a Raspberry Pi4 with related equipment which as proven invaluable to help develop our first 21.04 Raspberry Pi Ubuntu Budgie image.
Contributions
This year our community has contributed approx £5507 which is up from last year by almost approx £2250
We have a nominal £8742 in the bank, with set-aside costs for 2020 to 2024 + reserves.
Our confidence level for our financial viability is as close to 100% as you can get.
As a comparison:
2016-2017, our community contributed £248.90 with no set-aside costs and no reserves
2017-2018, our community contributed £2460 with set-aside costs for 2018 to 2022 + reserves
2018-2019, our community contributed £2919 with set-aside costs for 2019 to 2023 + reserves
2019-2020, our community contributed £3258 with set-aside costs for 2020 to 2024 + reserves
With your help, we look forward to making more donations to developers and organisations who have helped Ubuntu Budgie.
The Team
All Ubuntu Budgie team members including myself are volunteers. At this point we the team do not benefit financially in anyway from your generosity. If we had one or more full-time developers, then the speed of development and improvement would be exponentially higher. For this to become fiscally possible, the project would need to grow to approx 10x the current contribution rate to achieve that.
Canonical Support
Although we are an official flavour of the Ubuntu Family, we do not receive any financial help from Canonical. Canonical supports Ubuntu Budgie through their launchpad build systems and ISO distribution costs.
Thank You
All donors are displayed on our website unless you specifically request not to be presented.
Donations
If you would like to support Ubuntu Budgie, please feel free to donate to the project through either Paypal or Patreon.
Thank you to all who have chosen to join our community.
Ubuntu Budgie v21.04 (Hirsute Hippo) Release: 22nd April, 2021
Ubuntu Budgie 21.04 is a normal release that will be supported for 9 months until Jan 2022. Long Term Releases such as 20.04.2 provide assured stability over a longer term (3 yrs) than a standard 9 month release. Critical and stability fixes will be released for all the supported Ubuntu Budgie components; these will be undertaken by ourselves, Canonical and the wider Ubuntu community.
Ubuntu Budgie is the sum of many hundreds of developers working together.
For 21.04 your Ubuntu Budgie team have unfortunately done a bad thing … we have rocked our largest release ever…
For 21.04 we now have our very first Raspberry Pi 4 image – this is an area lots of members from the UB community have talked about over the years – and its thanks to new team member Sam Lane that we have made this a reality. Do checkout our release notes specifically for the Raspberry Pi 4
Budgie Desktop has now been uplifted to the very latest v10.5.2. We are pleased as a team to have contributed to this release – the results from the whole budgie developer community really shows in 21.04
We now include another Mac like makeover using the fabulous WhiteSur theme and icons through a click of a button. We have also backported this to 20.04 LTS and 21.04.
Also, we also have show-cased two new optional applets from the budgie developer community. Again we have backported these and made available to 20.04 LTS and 21.04.
Our desktop has been refreshed – we now sport a darker theme as a default with a brand new makeup for our Pocillo icons.
Windows Shuffler now includes a key new capability called Layouts. It’s now easy to define your work environment (a "Layout"), consisting of a set of arranged windows and/or applications. Just one click away.
Taken together, all the smaller changes plus the larger enhancements shapes our distro to be fully flexible and customisable to your workflow; with sane defaults to provide a first rate experience from the get-go.
Applets and mini-apps
Window Shuffler – Window Rules: Add ability to set rules for specific applications on which position / size / monitor new windows should be launched.
Window Shuffler – Layouts: Add the ability to launch and arrange a group of windows and/or applications in a single click.
Applications Menu:
Cosmetic – labels on budgie-desktop-settings are left aligned.
from upstream Terminal apps are no-longer shown in the menu such as xterm
QuickChar installation is now easier on other on Debian based distro’s – should not now need to patch your install locations
A new independent applet called budgie-clipboard-applet is now available – backported to 20.04 and 20.10 – look out for it via Menu – Budgie Extras
Bug fix for the applications menu so that rollover menus settings is remembered on logon.
The number of cities that our weather applet can now search has increased from 22.6k to 185k
Change to budgie-pixel-saver-applet. It now handles blacklisting of apps to stop it trying to add window decorations where a window didn’t have one in the first place. e.g. Firefox, Telegram and Ulauncher. This has been backported to 20.04 & 20.10 as well.
Budgie Desktop
v10.5.2 abridged upstream Solus release note summary here
Budgie 10.5.2 introduces new goodies to make your Budgie experience even better!
Budgie Menu has received various refinements for this release:
Budgie Menu introduces additional checks for an application’s DesktopAppInfo, ensuring that we consistently skip apps and exclude them from calculations when they have Hidden or NoDisplay set, as well as if the NotShowIn contains Budgie.
Budgie Menu will no longer show empty categories, a common occurrence when installing applications via WINE.
Budgie Menu will now alphabetically sort category names, which is useful when you have custom user desktop directories for applications. They are no longer forced to be below default system-wide desktop directories such as Internet / Networking, Office, Sound & Video, etc.
Applications which utilize pkexec in their desktop info will now spawn an asynchronous process, with pkexec being the command and passing the rest of the command line content as arguments.
The Icon Tasklist applet has seen new features and behaviour refinements in Budgie 10.5.2.
There are now two new options available, disabled by default, to launch a new instance of an application via the respective button for the application: middle click and double click. This expands on our existing option to create a new instance of an application by clicking the + button in the popover of each Icon Button.
The behavior of the Icon Tasklist has been refined in Budgie 10.5.2. We have consolidated duplicate logic in other less used classes into our dedicated application state tracking class, which is used by the Icon Tasklist and IconPopover to provide a list of running applications, their AppInfo, any group they belong to, and more. This consolidation has meant more consistent “skip pager” checks, as well as more consistent rejection of various types of windows, such as docks, apps with splashscreens and utilities e.g. controls for an emulator.
Thanks to this more consistent window type rejection, we are able to more closely discern between what is budgie-panel versus what is budgie-desktop-settings, which is part of the panel but is otherwise a NORMAL type application. This enabled us to resolve an issue where the pin and new instance buttons were being unintentionally shown, as well as an issue where you could not close Budgie Desktop Settings via the IconPopover controls (right click popover for each Icon Button in the tasklist).
After close discussions with members of the community on our forums on the expected behaviour of the Icon Tasklist, time was spent refining the behaviour of Icon Tasklist and individual Icon Buttons to be more consistent. Here are some examples:
a. When the “Show All Windows on Click” option is enabled, we will now more consistently show or minimize all windows on click if one of them is currently active.
b. If only one instance of an application is open and it is on another workspace (in this case the “Restrict to Workspace” option is not enabled), we switch to that workspace and unminimize the window (since the chances are you probably want to see the application in the first place).
We are always listening to feedback on how to improve the behaviour of Icon Tasklist while ensuring it remains simple and approachable to use. If you have an idea on how to improve it further, feel free to file an issue on Budgie’s issue tracker.
The Sound applet has seen a redesign and now features a dedicated button for mute toggling, as well as leveraging iconography for the System Settings button rather than text.
Dating back to the days of Budgie 7 in 2014, Budgie had been using an na-tray implementation also seen in desktop environments such as Cinnamon for the creation and management of system tray icons. Thanks to the incredible work by Solus contributor Campbell Jones, the System Tray has been completely rewritten from scratch, supporting tray icons leveraging the XEmbed Protocol. This new implementation resolves numerous issues such as:
Background icons not refreshing, resulting in instances where it may appear that multiple icons are overlapping.
Tray icons not consistently hiding when a panel hides (during “Intelligent” mode).
Tray icons blinking when panel transparency is set to “Dynamic”
Tray icons getting hidden when switching icon themes.
Additionally, a configuration option has been added for the System Tray that enables the setting of spacing between individual icons, making it perfect for those that want both their applets and tray icons to be equidistant!
Budgie Desktop View has been updated to provide a clearer differentiation between removing a Panel and removing an applet from a Panel. A dedicated button for removing a panel has been added below the Panel’s applet list, with a description that makes its purpose clearer. This button will not appear when you only have one panel in your Budgie setup. Building on this, we have removed the option to disable the panel removal confirmation dialog. From user reports, the consensus was that this option was too easy to enable, would result in accidental permanent removal of panels more frequently than desired, and lacked a clear user-friendly method to re-enable the prompt.
For those which use Budgie in another language than English, the menu items presented when adding a new Autostart application or command via the Autostart section are now translatable. For any language which has the terms translated, those will be used instead.
Budgie 10.5.2 is the first release of Budgie to feature a new budgie specific desktop icons implementation. Whilst not the default in Ubuntu Budgie, it is available to be installed called budgie-desktop-view.
This budgie specific implementation has been to introduce via a new, separate project that could be iterated on independently from Budgie Desktop itself. This project needed to be rigorously focused and developed with an understanding of the scope and intent of the project, not trying to be a file manager but rather a method of quickly accessing the content and applications you consider most important.
Budgie has always been about striking a balance in customization and that extends to the support we provide downstreams like Ubuntu Budgie as well. That is why we worked hard on introducing a new vendor-oriented mechanism to enable downstreams to choose a desktop icons implementation that fits them and their users best. Alongside our own “native” Budgie Desktop View implementation, we are providing official support in the Budgie Desktop Settings application for the configuration of DesktopFolder and Nemo.
Raven
Thanks to Solus contributor Evan Maddock, Budgie 10.5.2 introduces a new option to choose which side of the screen Raven should be. Prior to Budgie 10.5.2, Raven would always appear on the left side when the main panel and trigger were on the left, and appear on the right when the main panel was anywhere else.
Users will be able to choose between this behaviour, called “Automatic”, as well as left and right sides!
Translations
Thanks to our incredible community members that have stepped up to translate Budgie, Budgie is now more accessible than ever. Budgie 10.5.2 introduces support for three new languages: Afrikaans, Albanian, and Hindi. Budgie now has 40 languages which have 90% or more coverage and we have seen dedicated translators step up for a wide range of languages, many of which are now completely translated.
We are still working hard to get Budgie translated 100% into many languages. If you are interested in helping translate Budgie into your language, feel free to reach out!
Here are some other aspects of Budgie that received refinements:
Animation disabling: Background transitions and workspace switching are no longer always enabled but now honor the option to disable animations in Budgie Desktop Settings
Budgie’s Application Switcher
a. Typically referred to as the Alt+Tab switcher, this switcher now supports the Ctrl modifier, adding support for more custom keyboard layouts and mappings.
b. We now support an option to show all windows from all workspaces in the switcher, enabling you to switch between applications and workspaces simultaneously.
c. Budgie Run Dialog can now check keywords, improving search and aligning its behaviour closer to that of Budgie Menu.
Caffeine Applet: When Caffeine Mode is enabled, the timer will now update the spin button value based on how many minutes are remaining.
Forward-specific keyboard layout switching can now be done with Alt+Shift.
Transparency is now supported in background images, falling back to the fixed color or gradient behind it.
We now provide an option via GSettings to configure the desired screenshot commands, so downstreams can use alternatives to gnome-screenshot.
In addition to all the quality of life improvements and features we have added, Budgie 10.5.2 introduces many bug fixes including for some issues dating back years to the early days of Budgie 10.
Fix Workspace Applet allowing more than max supported workspace count. We will now return a -1 on our WM AppendNewWorkspace if we are rejecting more additions of workspaces, which informs our WorkspaceApplet to not show the + button (even if set to always show) and reject drag actions onto new workspaces.
Added missing LEFT and RIGHT panel layouts in the manager, which prevented downstreams and users from using panel.ini files with left or right panels.
During panel initialization, we will now appropriately set dock-mode if needed, which fixes an issue where the class would only be applied if the dock mode setting actually changed.
Fix a crash when removing an applet with missing information.
The Tasklist applet will no longer cause the rest of the panel contents to be thrown into the aether when you have many windows open. You will be able to scroll up / down to get all the windows and we will be working on dedicated buttons in the tasklist applet in Budgie 10.5.3. This resolves two bugs, one from 2014 and another from 2017.
Regions which do not have any panel widgets / applets will no longer be shown, allowing applets to take up more space and eliminates weird spacing related issues.
When changing away from dock mode on a panel, we will now correctly remove the dock-mode CSS class.
Chromium-based browser notifications no longer display with broken icon images. This was due to the fact that these browsers would prefix the icon with file:/// and Chromium-based browsers would not pass the correct path. We will now default to the fallback mail-unread-symbolic icon for these applications.
Notifications and Notification Groups can no longer be selected, which would result in a visual change with no obvious or easy way to deselect them. There are no functional changes, as there are no actions which make use of the selection of Notifications or Notification Groups.
Notifications are no longer appended to Notification Groups, resulting in older Notifications being higher in a Notification Group’s list than newer ones.
The Sound widget will no longer allow raising the volume above 100% when the option is off.
The MPRIS player will correct the album art URLs provided by Spotify, which would otherwise be misreported by Spotify, resulting in images which could not be found.
Budgie Popovers will now properly handle window scale factors.
Crash fixes related to the usage of Wnck have been resolved.
Fix some custom keyboard shortcuts and media keys not correctly applying after boot or reboot.
Night Light will now appropriately start or end if an application has the fullscreen state amongst its many states, and not just being fullscreen. This is useful if you have an application which is fullscreen and above or below other windows, is sticky (maintains position regardless of workspace), shaded, etc.
For this release, Ubuntu Budgei also has a fix added for non-english keyboard layouts such as Japanese/Chinese/Korean etc. We have added a bug-fix into budgie-desktop so that Ibus suggestions are displayed.
Themes
The Vimix theme make-over in budgie-themes & layouts was broken – this is now fixed and backported to 20.04 & 20.10
The latest QogirBudgie theme has been updated from upstream with a whole host of fixes.
Pocillo – enhancements to the look and feel:
a. sidebar now is shaded – this is now consistent with the dark variant.
b. similarly all button controls are now shaded
c. Nemo toolbar is also shaded.
d. Budgie Desktop Settings has been tweaked to resolve right-truncated controls.
e. Shadows has been reduced and
f. padding overall has been reduced to give a more compact feeling.
g. Thanks to @UltraBurstXD scrollbars have been restyled with a better colour suited to the different pocillo variants. In addition scrollbars default to a thin style which make then more elegant in our opinion.
Our Pocillo icon theme now inherits from a combination of Tela-Icons and Qogir Panel/symbolic icons
Our default theme is now "Pocillo-dark"
Moka and Faba icons have now been dropped from the default install.
The Mojave gtk theme has been refreshed upstream and is now in budgie welcome for 20.10 and 21.04 users.
The McMojave circle icon theme has been refreshed upstream and is now in budgie welcome for 20.04/20.10 & 21.04 users
Now available in v0.14.0 budgie-welcome is the WhiteSur make-over which includes the whitesur gtk theme/whitesur icons and roboto fonts. budgie welcome and this makeover is also available for 20.04 and 20.10
Both Plata and Evopop have been removed from our Themes and Makeovers due to these themes not having been updated for 6 months or more. We will also be looking much more closely at the existing themes in this screen for 21.10 – where themes do not support GTK+4 they may be also removed.
Budgie Welcome
Themes and Layouts now show a tab-look interface – this should aid discovery of layouts since it appears people couldn’t instantly visualise that option
Budgie Welcome now starts significantly faster on first start
Budgie Welcome uses the latest bootstrap v4 which includes faster display and navigation usage
Analogue Clock Applet added to Menu – Budgie Extras
Our Getting Started guide now covers keyboard shortcuts to move windows to other monitors
Brave can now be installed from Getting Started – Browser Ballot
Browser Ballot is now aware which architecture Welcome is running on – so only browsers applicable to Pi (for example) is displayed
Gutenprint is a Recommended application
Pocillo makeover defaults to dark-theme for 21.04 to correspond to the new default – the standard theme is used for 20.04 and 20.10
Additional
Often requested, htop has now been added as a default install –> this may be removed again if we can’t hide from the menu
We have run a poll with the community and the community have clearly spoken: thunderbird is now the default email client. Geary has been dropped from the ISO.
The backup tool deja-dup has become a great tool for backups and restores and we are more than happy to include this on our ISO out of the box.
Out of the box we now include thousands of printer drivers including support for Epson and Canon printers via printer-driver-gutenprint
We now include sane-airscan which supports thousands of modern network scanners (and a few USB based as well). Use simple-scan to connect to your scanner.
We now include gnome-remote-desktop instead of vino – Use Settings – Sharing to enable. Lookout for the ability to share Media folders, Remote Login (SSH) as well as Screen-sharing (VNC)
Slick Greeter now has the ability to configure the format of the clock – use Login Window to-do this.
Whilst Moka icons is no longer part of our defaults, we continue to look after the package on behalf of Debian and Ubuntu. Lots of proposed pull-requests have been included in our soft-fork to continue making Moka a first class icon set for all users.
Groovy backports have been copied to hirsute
Look out for our 21.04 wallpapers – enjoy!
In Settings – there is now a "Power Mode" section. The performance profile will only be available on systems which provide this functionality.
Some GNOME "40" applications are now in the repository. If they have been compiled with GTK-4 they will be Adwaita themed. This is to be expected since the vast majority of GTK themes only support GTK-3 and GTK-2 at this point in time. Please let us know which apps are Adwaita themed so we can monitor in future how these apps behave in newer themes made available as part of the 21.10 & 22.04 development cycles.
KEY FEATURES AVAILABLE TO UB FROM UBUNTU
Linux kernel v5.11
GNOME 40 applications
Latest version of LibreOffice 7.1
What does all that mean – most cutting edge yet stable software that brings great benefits for brand new hardware compatibility – including support for the very latest games.
UB MAINTAINED PACKAGES
Apart from the above (!) UB maintains many Debian packages. New versions available in 21.04 include:
Slick Greeter
Login Window Preferences
DesktopFolder
Arc Theme
KNOWN ISSUES
If you find that after the upgrade clicking the menu button crashes the panel, then CTRL+ALT+T to open a terminal then run:
Please read the Ubuntu Release notes which covers issues common to all Ubuntu Flavors.
HOW TO UPGRADE FROM 20.04.2 TO 21.04
Basically you don\’t. You should upgrade to 20.10 first before then upgrading to 21.04
HOW TO UPGRADE FROM 20.10 TO 21.04
IMPORTANT: remember to double-check you have the following vital package before you upgrade:
sudo apt install ubuntu-budgie-desktop
A few days/week or two after the formal release of 21.04 in April you will be automatically offered a graphical prompt to upgrade.
Alternatively, from a command line run:
update-manager
Some of the packages that were installed as part of the Ubuntu Budgie backports PPA (ppa:ubuntubudgie/backports) will be uninstalled as part of the upgrade. Use budgie-welcome to reinstall anything that is removed.
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Ubuntu Budgie v21.04 Raspberry Pi 4 Release: 22nd April , 2021
This is our very first Raspberry Pi image of Ubuntu Budgie. Team member Sam Lane has been actively creating this and we as a team hope you enjoy his efforts and ideas.
In these release notes the areas covered are:
Budgie ARM Configuration Tool
Raspberry Pi Remote Options
FindMyPi
Known Issues
Where to download Ubuntu Budgie
Summary
Ubuntu Budgie is the sum of many hundreds of developers working together.
21.04 is a large release in itself and we’ll describe the desktop release in separate release notes.
Here we describe what we have done for Ubuntu Budgie on a Raspberry Pi.
We recommend this image for a Raspberry Pi 4 & 400 with 4/8Gb Ram 32Gb SD Card. Whilst the image can be installed on older variants we do not recommend it. Best use other more suited images for these lower powered Pi’s.
Just download and write to a Class 10 SD Card or SSD/NVME (recommended) via Gnome Disks or raspi-imager.
The team recommends using KMS graphics for direct access (attached displays)
Budgie ARM & Pi Configuration Tool
Central to Ubuntu Budgie on a Pi 4 is our ARM & Pi Configuration Tool. This provides key customisation capabilities for the unique aspects of Pi usage.
Compact and Mini Layouts – these layouts will optimize the font sizes and menus to allow a full Ubuntu Budgie experience on low resolution screens.
CompactMini Layout
Overclocking – easily switch between 1.5GHz, 1.8GHz, and 2.0GHz CPU speeds. Clock speed and over_voltage will be adjusted automatically (reboot required)
Overclock3
CPU temp monitor – shows the current temperature, color coded green, yellow, and red to warn of overheating and throttling
Overclock
Overclock2
Change Pi video modes – select between FKMS (default), KMS (recommended and continually developed), and legacy (llvmpipe) video modes
Display Modes
GPU memory adjustment – while typically not needed, you can select between the default 128MB, 256MB or 512MB GPU memory options.
Display Options
Raspberry Pi Remote Options
SSH and VNC – easily enable VNC screen sharing and SSH to access your Pi via gnome-remote-desktop
XRDP service – XRDP can be installed and properly set up to allow remote access. Please note, the same user account cannot be logged in remotely and locally simultaneously, however different user accounts can be
RemoteVnc
Remote tab will display the Pi’s current IP address to provide easier access
FindMyPi
FindMyPi – using the configuration app on a machine other than a Raspberry Pi will scan the current network and show a list of IP addresses for Pis detected. Click the "Enable nmap" button to install the scanning tool nmap. You do not need the Arm & Pi configuration app running on the Pi 4 if using nmap.
Findmypi
Look for this in your Menu via the regular 21.04 desktop image (it is preinstalled).
For locations or networks where nmap may not be legally used to scan a network (e.g. certain workplaces/government locations), the Configuration Tool running on a Pi can enable a fallback UDP server to allow locating Pis on the network. Thus do use the "Start on login" option if using this fallback option to ensure the Pi can be found on boot.
Findpiserver
Current known issues
the graphics are slightly glitchy using fkms for direct access displays. We recommend using the KMS mode for direct access displays.
The Tweak Tool displays tab text states "fkms" is the default. For 21.04 it is in-fact KMS that is the default.
using the official Pi touchscreen (the one that connects via the DSI ribbon instead of HDMI) doesn’t seem to work in KMS mode. Budgie DOES load, but you get no display. FKMS mode works fine. This is a known upstream issue https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/issues/4020
when installing on a Compute Module 4, using the Pi Foundation’s IO Board, the USB ports may not be working. This is due to the DWC2 USB2 controller not being in host mode by default. If you are affected by this, it can be resolved by editing /boot/firmware/config.txt from another device, and adding dtoverlay=dwc2,dr_mode=host
Downloads
Our image is located on SourceForge – options to install are found on our Downloads page
Thanks to all of our generous donors the Ubuntu Budgie team has purchased a development laptop for me to continue supporting and developing our distro.
Up until now, I have been using my own personal laptop since the first 16.04 budgie-remix days. It was showing its age – needing to be shook hard to wake up, freezing at random times and generally just being a pain to use trying to support over three or four releases at the same time all in virtual machines.
We collectively as a team decided to purchase from a Linux friendly manufacturer; we decided on the Germany based company Tuxedo since their range was very competitive. The order was placed back in November 2020 for a Tuxedo Pulse 15. We knew there would be a delay in its delivery due to the world-wide lack of the Ryzen 7 processor. It didn’t help that Brexit hit a hard-exit that caused chaos at the border and a couple of frustrating weeks waiting to clear customs. More problematic was the massive instant tariffs – so for UK based consumers its now more difficult to justify to buy electronics from anywhere other than the UK 🙁
Tuxedo arrival
Well I must say I am impressed. The laptop was delivered really well packaged – it really did survive weeks on the road. Securely fitted in a customised box within a box. Padded with foam there was no chance of this thing rolling around during transport.
Tux1
This was a really light, slim machine, with a cracking matte screen with gorgeous contrasting colours and a keyboard that was really responsive. The keyboard is backlit as well. Very stylish.
Unexpected was the sound – the speaker was mounted underneath the laptop – but works perfectly – great stereo separation and sound was loud but without distortion.
Tuxedo OS
The laptop arrived with what is called Tuxedo OS. With trepidation I switched it on knowing from members of our discourse site that this was supposedly based upon Ubuntu Budgie.
Tux2.
Sure enough I spotted our slideshow – to the background said "Tuxedo" … and the words said Ubuntu Budgie.
Then the first "what the…"
Tux3
The Ubuntu purple GDM3 login window – what happened with the nice Slick Greeter? Carrying on a welcome message appeared … not our budgie-welcome screen though.
Tux4
Oops with the obvious typo but nice to see and "almost ready" message. The budgie panel has moved from top to bottom – with plank now on the left side of the screen.
Clicking OK presented a "In progress" dialog. No idea what was in progress but it seemed to stay visible for 10 minutes. The panel seem to be frozen and nothing was clickable. Then unexpectedly the laptop powered off without warning. Not a good start.
Booting back up – I noticed the boot speed – from pressing the power button to the login window was 18 seconds. Later I found out that 9 seconds was the EFI splash screen – so 9 seconds from grub to logon window. Nice!
Tux5
Poking around Tuxedo comes with unexpectedly linux kernel 5.6 – a Tuxedo oem kernel. The rest of the OS is based on Ubuntu 20.04.1 – so not the usual 5.4 kernel. The graphics seemed to be copied from the oibaf unstable PPA – not from the ubuntu repos.
Indeed the repo list was tuxedo all over with other custom tuxedo repos.
Tux6
The good…
In the system tray was an icon that display a really nice custom Tuxedo Control Center
Tux7
Nicely layed out with various sensors & support information. Bravo!
The laptop comes with a massive battery
Tux9
You can real fun with the "Time to empty" figure when letting the laptop go idle! In reality I’m guessing nine or more hours – more than enough to-do a full day of development.
The bad…
Browsing through the menu was lots of non default Ubuntu Budgie apps – snap-store, FreeCiv, KDE Connect, Libreoffice Base, KSysGuard, LinSSID and many others.
Why the number of KDE apps I don’t know – they didn’t really integrate and really felt like bloat.
Brasero disk writer was installed … this machine doesnt come with a DVD drive…
Tux8
The theme and icons are Tuxedo branded. I’m guessing its some-sort of Arc based GTK theme with a garish highlight colour. Icons are basically Moka based.
The ugly
Umm – just why the KDE discover? Just so odd to see
Tux10
Lots of software to discover via GNOME Software … and duplicated by snap-store as well!
Conclusions
The hardware is perfect. I can only congratulate Tuxedo for producing a really nice machine – powerful, well spec’d at a great price.
Tuxedo OS is a missed opportunity – weird defaults such as a purple GDM3, snap-store plus non integrated KDE based apps with several I’m wondering why they were included. The vendor seems to miss the elegance motif and thrown in a full grab-bag.
Running an update I was hoping the ancient kernel would be at least updated to the supported 5.8 HWE kernel. Unfortunately not.
I would acknowledge I am biased – at the end-of-the-day I didn’t buy this for the operating system – I bought it for the hardware and I warmly recommend it.
Needless to say – after 30 minutes I purged Tuxedo OS and installed both 20.04.2 Ubuntu Budgie & 21.04. Boot speed for 21.04 is 6 seconds from Grub to login window. Both variants of our distro work perfectly demonstrating installing Linux on a friendly Linux vendor based machine really makes sense.
We are pleased to announce the release of the next version of our distro, the second 20.04 LTS point release.
The LTS version is supported for 3 years while the regular releases are supported for 9 months.
The new release rolls-up various fixes and optimizations that have been released since the 20.04.1 release in August:
The kernel found in 20.10 has been backported to 20.04.2. This is part of the Hardware-Enablement-Stack release. 20.04(.1) users are automatically upgraded to the HWE (see later).
Budgie Welcome updates include lots more translation updates.
Budgie Desktop updates include :
Allow non-xkb layouts to appear and chosen in the keyboard applet (LP: #1902317)
Previews – resolve refreshing when there are no windows such as showtime/weathershow on the desktop
Previews – display previews for apps like libreoffice that change their class name after opening
Previews – fix crash when windows are closed whilst displaying previews
Layouts – fix potential crash condition when nemo is hiding its menu but the global menu was expecting it
Countdown – display correctly on vertical panels
Dropby – ensure dropby displays and works for two or more users on the same machine
Brightness Controller – Brightness control slider now works under GNOME 3.36
Shuffler Control – fixed incorrect label display for CTRL+ALT+1
Network applet – sort VPN list in alphabetical order
Latest translations
Brand new Mojave makeover in Budgie Themes & Layouts
Bug fixes to applets
budgie-sys-monitor,
indicator sysmonitor,
budgie-screenshot-applet,
budgie-pixelsaver-applet,
budgie-haste-applet,
budgie-cpufreq-applet,
budgie-calendar-applet,
budge-browser-profile-applet,
Brand new applets:
budgie-clipboard-applet
budgie-analogue-applet
We also inherits hundreds of stability, bug-fixes and optimizations made to the underlying Ubuntu repositories. Many thanks to all the volunteers, Debian & Ubuntu maintainers and Canonical employees who have done such a sterling job packaging the changes that many more developers from all over the world have resolved. The power of FOSS that we are all proud to be part of.
Download links and installation guide are provided. As always – do check the md256sum hash value of the downloaded ISO – this really does help you get on with a flying start for your install.
Remember, upgrades to the latest version of Ubuntu are entirely free of charge.
We recommend that all users read the the Ubuntu 20.04 Release Notes, which document caveats and workarounds for known issues affecting all flavours including Ubuntu Budgie.
HWE
The Ubuntu LTS enablement (also called HWE or Hardware Enablement) stack provides newer kernel support for existing Ubuntu LTS releases. This enablement stack will be installed automatically as part of your regular updates if you first installed from 20.04 or 20.04.1.
Ubuntu Budgie v20.10 (Groovy Gorilla) Release: Oct 22nd, 2020
Ubuntu Budgie 20.10 is a normal release that will be supported for 9 months until July 2021. Long Term Releases such as 20.04.1 provide assured stability over a longer term (3 yrs) than a standard 9 month release. Critical and stability fixes will be released for all the supported Ubuntu Budgie components; these will be undertaken by ourselves, Canonical and the wider Ubuntu community.
Ubuntu Budgie is the sum of many hundreds of developers working together.
For 20.10 your Ubuntu Budgie team have concentrated on paper-cuts – tidying up the rough areas reported by you our community. That’s not to say we as a team haven’t had some fun as well!
Shuffler has had some nice touches including the funky sounding sticky neighbours and also a full CLI to allow the tinkers to fully customise their application arrangements.
Our application menu now leverages the search facility to find the various parts of GNOME Settings. Many icons previously displayed are now stripped out allowing quicker visual access to applications. Also, look out for the optional rollover capability now in the category view.
We now include a full Mac like makeover using the fabulous Mojave theme and icons though a click of a button. We have also backported this to 20.04 LTS.
Also, we have developed an optional applet to replace the menu to present a full-screen application icons display based on a new project called lightpad. Again we have backported this and made available to 20.04 LTS.
Much of the bug-fixes have already been backported to our 20.04 LTS users. We will be continuing to rollout fixes throughout the LTS 3 year cycle.
Taken together, all the smaller changes plus the larger enhancements shapes our distro to be fully flexible and customisable to your workflow; with sane defaults to provide a first rate experience from the get-go.
BUDGIE DESKTOP:
Once again Ubuntu Budgie continues to take the lead to ensure budgie desktop remains compatible with the latest GNOME stack. This time around the development has been fairly smooth and it should be straightforward for all distros uplifting to GNOME 3.38.
Ubuntu Budgie 20.10 ships with a git release of budgie-desktop v10.5.1 which includes everything up-to the 20.10 freeze date.
Patch created to allow you to choose which screenshot app to be invoked when pressing Print, Ctrl Print, Alt Print – dconf-editor is used to change the app
Being a good contributor – we have upstream’d to the budgie-desktop project several 20.04 patches we have developed (Wnck crash, gnome-shell/budgie-desktop conflict as well as the ability to define the print button screenshot app)
Fix created and pull-request made to allow non Latin keyboard layouts from the keyboard applet (to be backported to 20.04)
Started looking at introducing compatibility with GNOME3.38 which will be on 20.10. PR made upstream
Wallpaper changing now respects the animation flag – so if you turn of animations, changing wallpapers occur instantaneously
Fix occasional crash when removing applets from a panel
Upstream has resolved system tray icons breaking on login, resume from suspension
Upstream has resolved Spotify cover art not displaying in raven
Upstream: chromium browser based notifications now display their icons
Upstream has enabled creating new instances of windows via middle click of icon task list applet
Upstream has completely reworked the system tray. This resolves lots of issues including icons appearing to overlap each other.
In raven we display week-numbers by default for the calendar
Patch added to hide the "Default" theme in budgie-desktop-settings which is the Debian specific name for "Adwaita"
Budgie Applets and mini-apps
Hotcorners: Option added to configure hotcorners via budgie-desktop-settings and therefore hide the icon from the panel
Dropby: Applet settings now has the ability to display the USB window notification in any corner you define
Dropby: Animation when copying media so that you now when copying is in progress/finished
Dropby: Crash reports resolved when second user account uses dropby on same machine (also backported to 20.04)
Application Menu: Touch Screen friendly – can now swipe on your touchscreen
Application Menu: Better keyboard navigation from the search to categories etc.
Application Menu: Search bar changes position to the bottom when on a bottom panel
Application Menu: Hide the large number of Settings menu icons shown in the grid view and the System Tools category menu – its more elegant this way – use the search capabilities to find Settings options like bluetooth and sharing etc.
Application Menu: In a similar fashion the logout/restart/suspend/shutdown icons have now been removed. Search actions are now available for these + the ability to "lock" the screen when searching and "hibernate" if you have enabled hibernation separately
Application Menu: Mouse rollover capability in the category view is now available via applet settings
Application Menu: Handling of fractions should be better and more intuitive (e.g. 5.3*0.5 in the search bar)
Application Menu – Category view – styled as a sidebar now
Previews: auto close when app loses focus (also backported to 20.04)
Previews: enable/disabling the capability is now dynamic – there is no need to logout/login
Previews: Multiple Libreoffice windows are previewed correctly to allow switching (also backported to 20.04)
Previews: now displays a tooltip on mouse hover (configurable) to show the full window name
Previews – no longer crashes when there are no windows and you invoke alt+tab multiple times (to be backported to 20.04)
Network: left/right panels do not have a large space when applet placed in end section. (also backported to 20.04)
Network: VPNs listed are now alphabetically sorted to make things easier to find the right VPN (also backported to 20.04)
Brightness Controller applet: Fix to make slider actually work. Should now work against a GNOME 3.36 base (also backported to 20.04)
Window Shuffler – enable/disabling the capability is now dynamic – there is no need to logout/login
Window Shuffler Sticky Neighbours – new capability to resize adjacent windows automatically
(click to launch YouTube video)
Window Shuffler – feedback when trying to tile windows that have a minimum size bigger than the tile placement
Window Shuffler – add CLI option to place apps to any tile position. This allows everyone to script their launch and placement setup
Welcome Layouts – global menu occasionally crashes the panel when using cupertino/theone layouts. For these we now re-enable the nemo menu – for other layouts we hide the menu (remember to use Alt to show the menu) (also backported to 20.04)
Made more distro friendly: Some distros don’t use some stuff located in /usr/bin and other file locations. We have now reworked the vala applets/mini apps to compile to user-defined system locations (i.e. via meson –bindir –sysconfdir –prefix –libdir)
Countdown: This applet is now vertical panel friendly with icons and text respecting the space available on vertical panels (also backported to 20.04)
New applet: Desktop fullscreen applauncher called budgie-lightpad-applet
budgie-workspace-wallpaper-applet has been rewritten in Vala. This has been done primarily to ensure no inadvertent panel crashes. In addition it takes into account the budgie desktop changes we made to switch wallpapers almost instantaneously (without animation) when switching workspaces.
WeatherShow – add the ability to display a custom location for the weather city
QuickChar – don’t crash when run on Wayland based desktops.
Budgie Welcome
Extras – rename "Applets" to Extras to better reflect the types of things that can be installed
Extras – Instructions on how to enable applets after install displayed immediately next to the install button when invoked.
Extras – All window previews to be uninstalled
Add Budgie Lightpad Applet installable for 18.04 and later
Themes – Corrected picture sizing to be identical for all themes
Themes – Allow users of the vimix makeover to install individual parts
Themes – Latest Upstream Paper theme has now removed Paper cursors – so rework to remove this from makeover
Mojave theme/icons and font makeover is now available in budgie-welcome. This has been backported to 20.04 as well
Getting Started – point to the correct YouTube video for Shuffler
Getting Started – Corrected 20.04 keyboard shortcut to launch Shuffler
Getting Started – Added Brave Browser to the browser ballot
Getting Started – fixed bug where translated topics had an apostrophe which caused the topic not to respond to a click to display the topic.
Arc-Theme has now been updated – the maintainer has changed to https://github.com/jnsh/arc-theme. The theme now has an additional theme called Arc-Lighter. Do give some feedback especially about anything budgie related to the new maintainer – do give thanks to the new maintainer taking on this challenge.
Paper-Theme updated to the latest upstream version
Pocillo-Theme – all the deprecated SASS code has been fixed. This future proofs the theme. Any help – large or small is welcome. Join the UB team by becoming the pocillo theme dedicated maintainer! https://github.com/UbuntuBudgie/pocillo-gtk-theme
QogirTheme – as requested by the community, the highlight focus colour has changed from Ubuntu Orange to Standard Blue.
Additional
All packages are now arm64 available. This means you can now use desktopify and create a Raspi v4 Ubuntu Budgie image
gedit text edit highlight for current line turned off. Dark themes are broken with gedit and often the text color cannot be read.
New option "Align to grid" when right click the desktop – this switches on the desktop grid mode. Note there will now be a "Customise" right click menu option available when you choose Align to grid and this can be used to customise the grid including turning off/on the icon auto-arrangement
We now ship with our own file extension handling list of apps e.g. picture files should open in the viewer gthumb and .deb should open in gnome-software
We now disable the nemo behaviour where a double-click in an empty area would go up one folder
We enable default in nemo to allow a slow doubleclick on filename to rename a file
The Ubuntu Budgie team choice wallpapers are now available in 20.10. Enjoy!
Nemo – Enforce asking when deleting and moving to trash so that inadvertent deleting files is not possible
Slick-greeter is part of the packages UB maintains – this has now been updated to the very latest available. So check that all is well.
lightdm-settings (the companion to slick-greeter) is part of the packages UB maintains – this has now been updated to the very latest available. So check that all is well.
All the backport packages have now been rebuilt for groovy – both amd64 and arm64 architectures.
Both nemo-share and nemo-dropbox backport packages have been rebuilt from the upstream v4.6.0 package
For new accounts/new installs, gnome-software no longer autostarts. This reduces the memory desktop usage by approx 100-150Mb. You’ll see an autostart entry in your autostart list – don’t worry, this is just to stop the autostart running for budgie-desktop – but runs correctly for GNOME Shell/Unity desktops.
KEY FEATURES AVAILABLE TO UB FROM UBUNTU
Linux kernel v5.8
GNOME 3.38 applications
Latest version of LibreOffice 7
GRUB2 is used to boot the ISO both in legacy and UEFI mode
What does all that mean – most cutting edge yet stable software that brings great benefits for brand new hardware compatibility – including support for the very latest games.
UB MAINTAINED PACKAGES
Apart from the above (!) UB maintains many Debian packages. New versions available in 20.10 include:
Slick Greeter
Login Window Preferences
DesktopFolder
Arc Theme
KNOWN ISSUES
Windows flicker when resizing – occurs on intel graphics. Its annoying – you can use this TearFree intel.conf method described by this answer but be aware this can cause performance issues since its using an older intel graphics driver..
Broadcom BCMWL driver fails to load i.e. no wifi capabilities – the workaround is to reinstall the bcmwl-kernel-source package
various reports that the ISO does not boot/install grub. The boot capabilities which includes introducing GRUB2 in legacy booting has caused a few instances where the ISO does not boot or not able to boot after installation. Do remember to report these issues to launchpad so that these edge cases are found and hopefully resolved during the next development cycle.
If you find that after the upgrade clicking the menu button crashes the panel, then CTRL+ALT+T to open a terminal then run:
Please read the Ubuntu Release notes which covers issues common to all Ubuntu Flavors.
HOW TO UPGRADE FROM 20.04.1 TO 20.10
IMPORTANT: remember to double-check you have the following vital package before you upgrade:
sudo apt install ubuntu-budgie-desktop
After the release of 20.10, ensure you change your Software Sources to offer updates for any version:
You will then be offered to upgrade when you run Software & Updates.
Alternatively, from a command line run:
update-manager
IMPORTANT We do not recommend running do-release-upgrade from a Tilix terminal since this will hang during the upgrade. If you want to use do-release-upgrade switch to a TTY and login before running the command.
Some of the packages that were installed as part of the Ubuntu Budgie backports PPA (ppa:ubuntubudgie/backports) will be uninstalled as part of the upgrade. Use budgie-welcome to reinstall anything that is removed.
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