Hey folks, hope you’re all doing well. Going to dive right in to answering a bunch of questions, what I have done so far, and where I’d like things to go into the future. Some of this is copy / pasta from a similar post I made on the Ubuntu Budgie forums, but should answer questions nonetheless and dive into some specifics for EndeavourOS and its Arch base.
First off, there is no negative impact (to Budgie) from my resignation from the Solus team. In fact, the reduced workload of not needing to maintain hundreds of packages, countless hours of testing, etc. can be put to use in other areas. While I will be starting a full-time job later this month (so while I do have a Patreon, it won’t be my sole source of income), I’ll still have plenty of time outside work to contribute to open source.
Status of Budgie 10 and 11
With this additional time and more open community to house Budgie, I feel comfortable with re-opening Budgie 10 series for new features and goodies, and less just being about maintaining it until whenever Budgie 11 is ready. It is certainly possible that not everything will carry over from 10 to 11, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make 10 the best it can be in the meantime. I do completely agree that there was a large gap in the default user experience between what was provided via Arch Linux + EndeavourOS and that of Solus. This includes not just the internal theming choice (in Solus, the decision was to use Plata Theme and disable the internal theme) but also evidently a different in the panel layout.
Addressing both of those:
- I was planning on gutting the internal theme and replacing it with a more modern Material-like UI (not saying it’ll literally be Material Design, but inspired by it). This was going to happen in the Budgie 10 series regardless, but it is a higher priority now that I actually have the time to do it and more hands on deck for other parts of Budgie development.
- Campbell Jones aka serebit, one of the folks that has historically contributed to Budgie Desktop (the system tray rewrite being a key one, but not their only contribution), actually now uses EndeavourOS. That usage is what helped identify “oh hey, what is up with the panel being at the top?”. Honestly I had gotten so used to the panel being at the bottom through the Solus branding configuration (and the layout there being really old) I just genuinely forgot to get it updated in mainline Budgie. That’s been sorted so in the next 10.x release, default layout will be at the bottom.
You can get some ideas of what I would like at the very least here, but this isn’t just about me. We’re all Budgie users, so I would love your feedback there too. This may include “downstream” projects like Ubuntu Budgie having some applets get mainlined of some of their applets into existing ones and improving any UX along the way, merging some into official Budgie Desktop (shuffler anyone?). Includes Raven API, new internal theme that I’ll be working on, and more. While this all actually has to be coded, the point is to at least open the door to it. Not every idea or every applet will get merged, but being more open to them is the idea.
The plan going forward is still to have Budgie 11 in EFL. However, a major change for the direction of Budgie 11 will be the priority of Wayland. While Budgie 10 series does use a multitude of X APIs as well as those in GTK / GDK 3, the focus for Budgie 11 will be Wayland-first, X11 second. I will be tinkering with building a wlroots-based compositor and while I can’t promise that anything will be delivered leveraging it (might consider Enlightenment’s WM or a fork of it), Wayland is a priority, and technical decisions will be conscious of that. Wayland may in fact be the only thing that is supported, time will tell.
What I Have Done So Far
This is an ever evolving list that I am too lazy to update, but here is a copy / pasta:
- I more or less hard forked Budgie and related software. The name is still the same and no, the issues can’t get carried over from the old repository (which has been the bane of Budgie’s existence for several years now), but the silver lining is way more flexibility. Budgie Desktop now lives on under a new GitHub Organization, Buddies of Budgie, as well as
budgie-desktop-viewandbudgie-screensaver. This will be the same organization that will house all the components for Budgie 11. - I have set up Transifex which will house the translations. I have attempted to move over as many from the Solus Weblate as possible, but unfortunately there was some import errors with some of the languages, so I need to mess with those a bit. There no longer is a dedicated
budgie-translationsrepo, but rather the translations are merged back into Budgie Desktop itself. - I have set up a Matrix space to facilitate communication, collaboration, and engagement (regardless of whether or not you are a developer). This even includes some channels for support (when and where possible, not everyone will have the answer for their or your OS of choice) and screenshots.
- I have created a Discussions area in our Budgie Desktop repository that has a variety of topics, including things we’d like to see for Budgie 10 series (“Making Budgie 10 Fly Again”), beyond (website, talks for Budgie 11), etc. It isn’t a replacement for the issue tracker (that still exists on the new repo), but may be helpful either way.
- I have purchased the relevant domain (
buddiesofbudgie.org) and will be working on some mockups for it. Site will be made in GatsbyJS and open source, feature a Help Center and developer documentation, and the obvious marketing for Budgie and OSes that use Budgie. Release announcements will go there too. - I have already added two new teams: “Best Buds” and “Helpers”. “Best Buds” have the maintain permissions in the org, which means direct push access, issue triaging, even tagging releases (though for final QA I’d still like to be the one doing that
). Multiple Ubuntu Budgie folks has received an invite to it, and other past Budgie Desktop contributors that I know provide high quality code as well. Helpers may not be used as much, but is there to help some of the day-to-day operations (issue triaging) a bit easier for everyone else. @flyingcakes reached out about how to get involved with Budgie development and that is certainly exciting as well to have more folks from EndeavourOS reaching out.
Additional Clarifications
- There is no right or wrong operating system to try out Budgie. All that is needed is the latest GNOME stack, and we all know Arch provides that. Personally, both Arch and Fedora (as well as Endeavour by proxy of Arch) are extremely compelling options for me at the very least until Serpent OS is in a ready state, and I am committed to not shipping any Budgie within Serpent OS with supplemental branding beyond say, wallpapers or something. The Budgie will be stock from mainline, so you shouldn’t feel like you are getting a different and possibly worse experience by using Endeavour.
- I want to provide a platform, not a product. No “you need to use every one of these apps to get the best experience, you have to use our theme and widget library to best integrate” but rather make Budgie able to be as reasonably flexible as it can (still some ownership / responsibility on other projects). We are not building an ecosystem of applications, we are encouraging everyone else to build what they like in a way that respects all Linux desktop environments. Folks from Fedora, GeckoLinux & OpenSUSE, Ubuntu Budgie, and of course EndeavourOS + Arch should feel encouraged to get involved. Eventually Serpent OS (my new home) when it is ready and usable. Less silos and more collaboration.