The release of the Budgie 10.6 desktop is published, which was the first release after the decision to develop the project independently of the Solus distribution. The project is now curated by the independent organization Buddies Of Budgie. Budgie 10.6 continues to be based on GNOME technologies and its own implementation of the GNOME Shell, but the Budgie 11 branch is scheduled to migrate to the Enlightenment Foundation Library (EFL) set of libraries developed by the Enlightenment project. The project code is distributed under the GPLv2 license. You can use distributions such as Ubuntu Budgie, Solus, GeckoLinux, and EndeavourOS to get familiar with Budgie.
Budgie uses the Budgie Window Manager (BWM) to manage windows, which is an extension of the core Mutter plugin. Budgie is based on a panel that is similar in organization to the classic desktop panels. All panel elements are applets, which allows you to flexibly customize the composition, change the layout and replace the implementations of the main panel elements to your liking. Available applets include the classic application menu, task switcher, open window list area, virtual desktop view, power management indicator, volume control applet, system status indicator, and clock.
Main innovations:
- The positioning of the project has been revised - instead of the final product, Budgie is now presented as a platform on which distributions and users can create solutions tailored to their own preferences. For example, the ability to choose the design, a set of applications and a desktop style is provided.
- Organizationally, work has been done to eliminate the separation between the development organization and downstream projects such as Ubuntu Budgie, which create final products based on Budgie. Such downstream projects are given more opportunities to participate in the development of Budgie.
- To make it easier to create your own solutions based on Budgie, the codebase is divided into several components, which are now shipped separately:
- Budgie Desktop is directly a user shell.
- Budgie Desktop View is a set of desktop icons.
- Budgie Control Center is a configurator forked from the GNOME Control Center.
- The code for tracking application activity has been rewritten and the Icon Tasklist applet has been improved, which provides a list of active tasks. Added support for application grouping. Resolved an issue with delisting valid applications with an atypical window type, for example some KDE programs such as Spectacle and KColorChooser were previously not shown in the list.
- The theme has been redesigned to unify the appearance of all Budgie components. Dialog borders, padding and color scheme have been brought to a unified look, the use of transparency and shadows has been reduced, support for GTK themes has been improved.
- The taskbar has been modernized. Improved panel size setting. Widgets placed on the panel for showing the battery charge and displaying the clock have been improved. Changed panel default settings to reduce the discrepancy between panel location and widgets shown across distributions.
- The system for displaying notifications has been rewritten, which is separated from the Raven applet, which is now responsible only for displaying the sidebar. The notification system can now be used not only in Raven, but also in other desktop components, for example, it is planned to organize the display of a list of notifications in the task area (Icon Tasklist). GTK.Stack is used to display pop-up windows. Improved tracking of recent notifications and pausing notifications.
- The window manager eliminates unnecessary calls that cause content to be redrawn.
- Returned support for GNOME 40 and Ubuntu LTS.
- To work with translations, the Transifex service is used instead of Weblate.
Source: opennet.ru