Ubuntu Budgie For Linux

Ubuntu Budgie is one of those Ubuntu flavors that once you try it, you can't but feel drawn to it. It's simple, it's clean and modern-looking, polished, and overall a great daily driver Ubuntu/Linux OSes.

The Budgie desktop has always been the thing that made Ubuntu Budgie so special, and I'm happy to report that there's a new version of said desktop in the latest version of Ubuntu Budgie, namely 23.10 - codenamed Mantic Minotaur.

As expected, 23.10 is "just" a normal/interim release. This means that it will only receive updates/support for nine months starting from Oct 2023 and ending in July 2024.

First off, let's talk about the improvements of the Budgie desktop. If you've tried Ubuntu Budgie 23.04, then the desktop might not seem all that different. To be fair, 10.8 basically builds upon the foundations of the previous 10.7.1 version, so the differences are not groundbreaking.

That said, there are some nifty and interesting changes. The main changes are the various improvements to the Budgie Menu. This includes the adoption of StatusNotifier in the System Tray. What this means is that apps can not "talk" to their respective tray icons and send info over DBus. Not the biggest of results, but a slightly increased value when it comes to user experience.

One actually new thing is the Magpie x0.x support, making Budgie 10.8 the first version of the desktop to feature support for Magpie ABI. Magpie ABI is basically a soft fork of GNOME's Mutter window manager. Why is this important? Well, let's just say that Wayland support is becoming more and more important and this is a very good step in that direction (still, it's a long-term goal).

There's also a new Budgie Trash applet which, you've guessed it, allows you to access the trash folder easily. The fact that it is now an official tool and not a third-party one is also something that's quite nice, just goes to show that there's a good community around this project.

Since we are on the subject of applets, I have to mention the new Budgie Battery Indicator in the Status applet. Now, you can control the Performance/Power profile modes easier thanks to three provided options: Balanced, Power Saver, and Performance. The VisualSpace applet, WeatherShow, Application Menu are other applets that received improvements.

This is something that might go under the radar, but the System Tray applet has been completely refreshed for Budgie 10.8.

Ubuntu Budgie's themes have not been overlooked either. There are a lot of darkened UI sections and elements such as the Budgie Menu and the panel. The 23.10 version also comes with a series of nice popular GTK themes. Just go to Menu -> Budgie Makeovers (you can use the Welcome app for this particular task).

While we're on the subject, this is the third change of the Ubuntu Budgie welcome app. Since 22.04, Ubuntu Budgie welcome has been moved to core22 (good for lowering ISO size), had its dropbox screenshot size tweaked, received a new Dropbox installation, and got a new Fluent make-over.

Ubuntu Budgie 23.10 Mantic Minotaur is the last release before the highly anticipated Ubuntu 24.04 (and Ubuntu Budgie 24.04 respectively). Is it worth getting your hands on it and giving it a try? While there's no perfect answer to this question, and while the changes between 23.04 and 23.10 are astronomical, I really like 23.10.

I would not consider it for my daily driver OS because I value stability above everything else, but I have tried 23.10 and I have to say that if you haven't tried an Ubuntu Budgie version before, this is a very good choice.