8 ms·

Budgie Is Worth a Try

72 points by thastings 6y ago

alpineidyll3 6y ago
Like many I needed to replace a very old MBP recently, and wasn't enthusiastic about paying top dollar for developer nag screens and recompiling stuff for a custom processor. I decided to once again try laptop Ubuntu, with an Asus Zephyrus. It's actually working great. Even battery life is good and I have a cuda capable graphics card. I think it's finally the year of desktop Linux ;)
- thastings 6y ago
  Indeed, wink-wink :D
- barrenko 6y ago
  I need to get one of those things again for Blender work. Had one at my last job, grows on you :D.
christophilus 6y ago
I really like Solus and Budgie, but last time I tried it enough things were broken (ex: switching workspaces via keyboard shortcuts) that I moved on. I currently dual boot Pop and Elementary. I particularly like Elementary’s terminal and their picture in picture feature. But elementary is getting long in the tooth.
- thastings 6y ago
  Case in point. Pop really is the pinnacle of GNOME Ubuntu derivatives IMO, I've run it for years. And if it wasn't for the 18.04 base of Elementary, Budgie would've slipped under my radar completely.
  - greyandgreen 6y ago
    Agreed. Pop is the distro to beat for daily use for me at least. I've been using Linux as a daily driver since 1998 and until Pop, the only thing I felt comfortable with was Window Maker.
    - rajlego 6y ago
      What is window maker? Never heard of it
      - greyandgreen 6y ago
        WM is a highly configurable window manager that just stays out of your way. Light, efficient, and fast. https://www.windowmaker.org/ https://www.windowmaker.org/
- veddox 6y ago
  I haven't tried Budgie yet. I really like Elementary - a lovely design consistently implemented. Unfortunately (like you said for Budgie), I found it buggy enough that I eventually went back to standard Ubuntu. Might give it another try in a few years.
ktm5j 6y ago
Every time I try to open this link (on mobile) after a second it redirects me to some sketch porn site..
- LVDOVICVS 6y ago
  Same. Firefox on iOS. However, no problem with Edge on iOS.
  - Darmody 6y ago
    Tried to replicate it on Firefox on Android with no luck. I tried with data, wifi, uBlock enabled/disabled, etc.
- wombat-man 6y ago
  that's really interesting. I used to have this problem all the time but I just realized that I haven't really seen the problem on my device in at least a year or so.
- exikyut 6y ago
  Hmm. If you're on Android: - plug your phone into your PC - open chrome://devices on your PC - open a new tab on your phone - find the tab you just opened on the PC side and hit 'inspect' (or 'inspect fallback' if there's a version mismatch alert) - ensure 'preserve log' is checked in the network tab - if you want you can paste the URL on the PC side s/PC/Mac/ as applicable Now you can go digging: once you've located the first evil request, select it and the Initiator tab should tell you what loaded it. Nobody else can repro, so the root cause may be interesting.
clircle 6y ago
I fancy Ubuntu's modified version of Gnome. Budgie looks pretty similar to that.
kilian 6y ago
I really wanted to like Budgie but it has so many nits/broken things when I tried it two years ago that I moved away. The thing that finally got me was that the workspace switcher came with a 300ms timeout before switching workspaces after hitting the shortcut.
- thastings 6y ago
  I've seen the old Budgie too, it really wasn't good back then. Now it's more or less bug-free, alhough, I personally don't use multiple workspaces, so can't comment on that.
- JoshStrobl 6y ago
  I can't really speak to any sort of timeout, but I have since reduced animation timings and tied the "disable animations" option into workspace switching as well (so there is zero transition in it, should you disable animations).
- hunterloftis 6y ago
  This is surprising to hear. I only tried Budgie recently but I found it more responsive and reliable than previous window managers (xfce, mate). This includes workplace switching which I use extensively.
corytheboyd 6y ago
I’ve been using the Ubuntu Budgie for a few months now to replace an ancient MBP and it’s been great. Some minor bugs, but nothing like what others are mentioning (switching between workspace works fine, and is fast)
mythz 6y ago
Just happened to be checking out Linux Distro's when this came up, here's are some videos of (IMO) the best looking modern ones I've found: - Zorin Lite (Xfce) - https://youtu.be/NrC0zTqkvbU?t=96 https://youtu.be/NrC0zTqkvbU?t=96 - Deepin (QT) - https://youtu.be/WlB_1kQL0nQ https://youtu.be/WlB_1kQL0nQ - Garuda (KDE) - https://youtu.be/KK280Y0cNmQ https://youtu.be/KK280Y0cNmQ - Manjaro (Gnome) - https://youtu.be/N1xem3UdgB8 https://youtu.be/N1xem3UdgB8 - Pop! OS (Gnome) - https://youtu.be/HAHLx9RekW4 https://youtu.be/HAHLx9RekW4 Did checkout Solus/Budgie which looks nice & minimal but wouldn't exactly consider it a standout. Haven't used a Linux Desktop as a daily driver for over a decade so haven't been keeping up to date with the state of the Linux Desktop and was surprised to find these fringe distros looking nicer than some of the larger more mainstream ones I used to run.
- sirius87 6y ago
  Just in case someone's looking for that macOS look and feel with the stability of the Linux Mint Cinnamon [1] desktop environment, here's how - https://youtu.be/DMs7DX3Um9E https://youtu.be/DMs7DX3Um9E [1] https://youtu.be/oFx_aMbN_NY?t=19 https://youtu.be/oFx_aMbN_NY?t=19
- yboris 6y ago
  I read an article raving about how beautiful Deepin is -- so I'm eager to eventually give it a try: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2018/12/10/meet-the-linux-desktop-that-blows-away-windows-10-and-macos/?sh=2e66fa605000 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2018/12/10/meet-...
  - gchamonlive 6y ago
    That is from 2018, and at that time I used deepin daily. However, since moving from their compositor to kwin, things started going off rails. I was on and off on their github pages posting and commenting on issues and what I learned is that at that time they had been pushing for solving technical debt in their codebase. But the system overall became so unstable that I was left with a choice of not updating my arch rolling install often or moving to another de. I chose the latter, moved to KDE and never had any issues anymore. No weird hack to make WiFi work, no update breaking the compositor making me have to hop between compositors. I mean, that was 2018, things might have stabilized a little. But a year ago a friend of mine, long time fan of deepin moved to KDE too because of these same stability issues. By all means try it out. But I wouldn't hold my breath.
JoshStrobl 6y ago
Long time lurker, had to create an account to post about this though. Hey folks! "Budgie is based on GTK and the GNOME Shell." To clarify, Budgie is NOT based on GNOME Shell. Budgie uses gnome-settings-daemon, GTK, and Mutter. It's written with GTK, C, and Vala, whereas GNOME Shell is written in C, St, and JavaScript. Budgie 11 isn't going to use any GNOME applications, its settings daemon, or Mutter. May not even use GTK (but rather EFL). "originally developed for the distro called Solus" It is still developed for Solus primarily. "Another nice feature is the extensions that are baked into the Budgie Extras app, shipped together with the desktop." This is part of the Ubuntu Budgie experience, not Budgie itself. "These extensions are all developed by the maintainers of the desktop environment, so breakage is not really expected." As the developer of Budgie, no these are not all developed by the maintainers. Many of them are developed by Ubuntu Budgie, whereas I use and develop on Solus. Breakage is to be expected and has occurred in the past, leading me to have to triage these issues filed against proper upstream rather than Ubuntu Budgie's extras repo. "One of these extensions is a global menu that works wonderfully, and supports all my applications" This is not one which is developed by us (Solus). "The print screen keyboard shortcuts known from GNOME don't work by default" Works under Solus.
- ragnese 6y ago
  I haven't followed budgie in a couple of years, but the last I understood about it, it might not be technically accurate to say it's based on GNOME *Shell*, but it's absolutely based on GNOME, the desktop stack. Just to clarify your clarification. :) Budgie can't even comfortably coexist with GNOME Shell on the same OS installation- That's how much it shares with GNOME. If you change your settings in GNOME Shell with the Settings app, it *will* affect your Budgie session. Maybe you shouldn't say it's "based off of GNOME Shell", but it's probably accurate to say that Budgie is an alternative Shell for GNOME. Also, I remember a ton of hype for Budgie 11 from years ago already. And that was when Ikey was still smashing out code for the project. I even remember Solus devs at the time saying they might never actually do version 11 because they had fixed and worked around some of the issues that they thought they wouldn't be able to in 10.4(?). So, is Budgie 11 actually going to happen?
  - 6y ago
ragnese 6y ago
A couple of people are here mentioning bugs they've encountered, etc. So I'm responding with them in mind (not necessarily arguing with or against them). I had grown increasingly pessimistic with my personal computing choices. I'm into the philosophy of truly owning and controlling my stuff, so I run free operating systems exclusively on my personal machines, including my phone (to the extent that it's possible with the firmware blobs, etc). But all Linux desktops are pretty rough around the edges. It really disappointed me that I've never had a Linux machine that just worked perfectly. It was always something- xmodmap would just stop working in Plasma, settings wouldn't stick in Xfce, GNOME's sloppy focus doesn't work consistently, etc. I started to get bummed out until I've been working on this Macbook Pro for work. The stupid thing can't even keep the background images correct. First of all, you can't just say "Please use this same image/color for all desktop background on all screens." So you set every background to the same thing manually, like some kind of animal. Then you plug your laptop into your two monitors at home and one of them has the default wallpaper! Okay, so you set that one to the image you want. Great. Then you go back to the office and plug into those monitors again and one of THOSE is somehow back to the default wallpaper! It happens every time I plug back into a different set of monitors! Now I'm not pessimistic anymore! Nothing works. It's great. We're all equal. A trillion dollar company can't even make an OS that sets the wallpaper correctly (or prevent bugs where anyone can login as root, or write a calculator app that works correctly). So yeah, go give Budgie a try. It probably sucks. But you might find that it sucks in ways that are tolerable!
- dcastonguay 6y ago
  I alternate between a Razer 15 and a MacBook Pro that I plug into a 3 display setup and this is one of the things that is very aggravating / comically short-sighted about macOS with multiple displays. While I largely prefer using macOS, the way that Windows 10 handles desktops is much better in my opinion. I can't understand why macOS does not let you display your menu bar on all displays if you don't have "separate spaces" enabled. It seems so strange to me that throughout the entire development process no one thought it was kind of ridiculous that the user would not be able to access the menu bar of an application from the same screen the application is on. That said, I basically cross my fingers now every time I win+tab in Windows 10 because about 10-15% of the time the entire UI locks and I just have to wait 1-2 minutes before I can use my machine again. So yea, "sucking in ways that are tolerable"!
nightowl_games 6y ago
I dont like Gnome's defaults. I have the standard GNOME 2 was better mindset. Honestly its the giant app switcher thingy that comes up when you press Super. I just cant stand that. But I wanted the "it just works" aspect of Ubuntu, so I looked around and went with Ubuntu Budgie. I would have gone full solus, but I needed to run Unity3D so I stuck with Ubuntu. I think Budgie is the best looking DE for my tastes. Most things worked great, but I did have a few random problems. I had a bug in Plank where new apps wouldnt show up on it. I gave up on fixing it and switched to Linux Mint. Mint's Cinnamon and Budgie are pretty similar, and Mint just had a few more years of maturity under its belt. I'm really happy to see Solus continuing development, especially after it's original creator left the project. I'm very happy with the state of Linux DE's these days. The haters are always gonna hate but Budgie, Pantheon, Cinnamon and MATE are all light years ahead of where we were not long ago. And like other posters have mentioned, we are also witnessing a decay in the quality of MacOS. Keep up the great work Linux DE developers!
- greyandgreen 6y ago
  Agreed. Most DEs are well designed and work well enough. I just don't like busy UIs. I am now on Gnome on Pop!_OS because the latest Gnome, at least on Pop, seems to stay out of my way. On Fedora or other, there are so many errors that constantly present themselves. Window Maker is what I used for years until I discovered Pop. I may yet install WM on top of Pop.
birdyrooster 6y ago
It's a shame that such a beautiful operating system is being paired with that ugly font.
yboris 6y ago
Sorry if off-topic, but I just heard of a mobile-friendly "iPad style OS" called JingOS https://en.jingos.com/ https://en.jingos.com/
pdimitar 6y ago
I'm pondering installing a graphic interface on my home NAS-like Manjaro server so I can just watch my movies and shows directly through it. Last time I tried this, XFCE was quite adequate. Not much customisation or anything fancy but I don't need it for a KODI-like machine anyway. So I wonder: is Budgie a viable candidate? Screenshots around the net look really nice but I'm skeptical how lightweight is it. For example, can I play 60FPS movies? RAM usage isn't a concern; the server has 32GB of it. Apologies if all this comes off as a bit naive; I deliberately have mostly avoided Linux desktop so far and I'm now finding myself in a position when I don't know much about it.
- hunterloftis 6y ago
  I just moved my home desktop from Manjaro XFCE -> Ubuntu Budgie and it's significantly snappier. I don't say "faster" because I didn't do any before/after quantitative benchmarks, but my experience has been that Budgie provides a responsive UI.
  - pdimitar 6y ago
    Thank you! Have you used any 60FPS user interfaces or played movies?
    - thastings 6y ago
      Actually, I'm using Ubuntu Budgie with a 120 Hz 1080p monitor, it's very responsive. Very much what you would expect these days from any desktop.
      - pdimitar 6y ago
        Very valuable feedback. Thank you!
hunterloftis 6y ago
My setup is a USB-C hub + switch that toggles my monitor/keyboard/mouse/headphones/webcam between my work (MBP) and personal (homemade frankenstein) machines. Ubuntu Budgie + https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto makes this a great experience by letting me re-use muscle memory (the key left of space + space => global menu; the furthest-left key + arrows => workspace switching).

72 points by thastings 6y ago

Like many I needed to replace a very old MBP recently, and wasn't enthusiastic about paying top dollar for developer nag screens and recompiling stuff for a custom processor. I decided to once again try laptop Ubuntu, with an Asus Zephyrus. It's actually working great. Even battery life is good and I have a cuda capable graphics card. I think it's finally the year of desktop Linux ;)

thastings 6y ago
Indeed, wink-wink :D
barrenko 6y ago
I need to get one of those things again for Blender work. Had one at my last job, grows on you :D.

christophilus 6y ago

I really like Solus and Budgie, but last time I tried it enough things were broken (ex: switching workspaces via keyboard shortcuts) that I moved on. I currently dual boot Pop and Elementary. I particularly like Elementary’s terminal and their picture in picture feature. But elementary is getting long in the tooth.

thastings 6y ago
Case in point. Pop really is the pinnacle of GNOME Ubuntu derivatives IMO, I've run it for years. And if it wasn't for the 18.04 base of Elementary, Budgie would've slipped under my radar completely.
- greyandgreen 6y ago
  Agreed. Pop is the distro to beat for daily use for me at least. I've been using Linux as a daily driver since 1998 and until Pop, the only thing I felt comfortable with was Window Maker.
  - rajlego 6y ago
    What is window maker? Never heard of it
    - greyandgreen 6y ago
      WM is a highly configurable window manager that just stays out of your way. Light, efficient, and fast. https://www.windowmaker.org/ https://www.windowmaker.org/
veddox 6y ago
I haven't tried Budgie yet. I really like Elementary - a lovely design consistently implemented. Unfortunately (like you said for Budgie), I found it buggy enough that I eventually went back to standard Ubuntu. Might give it another try in a few years.

ktm5j 6y ago

Every time I try to open this link (on mobile) after a second it redirects me to some sketch porn site..

LVDOVICVS 6y ago
Same. Firefox on iOS. However, no problem with Edge on iOS.
- Darmody 6y ago
  Tried to replicate it on Firefox on Android with no luck. I tried with data, wifi, uBlock enabled/disabled, etc.
wombat-man 6y ago
that's really interesting. I used to have this problem all the time but I just realized that I haven't really seen the problem on my device in at least a year or so.
exikyut 6y ago
Hmm. If you're on Android: - plug your phone into your PC - open chrome://devices on your PC - open a new tab on your phone - find the tab you just opened on the PC side and hit 'inspect' (or 'inspect fallback' if there's a version mismatch alert) - ensure 'preserve log' is checked in the network tab - if you want you can paste the URL on the PC side s/PC/Mac/ as applicable Now you can go digging: once you've located the first evil request, select it and the Initiator tab should tell you what loaded it. Nobody else can repro, so the root cause may be interesting.

clircle 6y ago

I fancy Ubuntu's modified version of Gnome. Budgie looks pretty similar to that.

kilian 6y ago

I really wanted to like Budgie but it has so many nits/broken things when I tried it two years ago that I moved away. The thing that finally got me was that the workspace switcher came with a 300ms timeout before switching workspaces after hitting the shortcut.

thastings 6y ago
I've seen the old Budgie too, it really wasn't good back then. Now it's more or less bug-free, alhough, I personally don't use multiple workspaces, so can't comment on that.
JoshStrobl 6y ago
I can't really speak to any sort of timeout, but I have since reduced animation timings and tied the "disable animations" option into workspace switching as well (so there is zero transition in it, should you disable animations).
hunterloftis 6y ago
This is surprising to hear. I only tried Budgie recently but I found it more responsive and reliable than previous window managers (xfce, mate). This includes workplace switching which I use extensively.

corytheboyd 6y ago

I’ve been using the Ubuntu Budgie for a few months now to replace an ancient MBP and it’s been great. Some minor bugs, but nothing like what others are mentioning (switching between workspace works fine, and is fast)

mythz 6y ago

Just happened to be checking out Linux Distro's when this came up, here's are some videos of (IMO) the best looking modern ones I've found: - Zorin Lite (Xfce) - https://youtu.be/NrC0zTqkvbU?t=96 https://youtu.be/NrC0zTqkvbU?t=96 - Deepin (QT) - https://youtu.be/WlB_1kQL0nQ https://youtu.be/WlB_1kQL0nQ - Garuda (KDE) - https://youtu.be/KK280Y0cNmQ https://youtu.be/KK280Y0cNmQ - Manjaro (Gnome) - https://youtu.be/N1xem3UdgB8 https://youtu.be/N1xem3UdgB8 - Pop! OS (Gnome) - https://youtu.be/HAHLx9RekW4 https://youtu.be/HAHLx9RekW4 Did checkout Solus/Budgie which looks nice & minimal but wouldn't exactly consider it a standout. Haven't used a Linux Desktop as a daily driver for over a decade so haven't been keeping up to date with the state of the Linux Desktop and was surprised to find these fringe distros looking nicer than some of the larger more mainstream ones I used to run.

sirius87 6y ago
Just in case someone's looking for that macOS look and feel with the stability of the Linux Mint Cinnamon [1] desktop environment, here's how - https://youtu.be/DMs7DX3Um9E https://youtu.be/DMs7DX3Um9E [1] https://youtu.be/oFx_aMbN_NY?t=19 https://youtu.be/oFx_aMbN_NY?t=19
yboris 6y ago
I read an article raving about how beautiful Deepin is -- so I'm eager to eventually give it a try: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2018/12/10/meet-the-linux-desktop-that-blows-away-windows-10-and-macos/?sh=2e66fa605000 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2018/12/10/meet-...
- gchamonlive 6y ago
  That is from 2018, and at that time I used deepin daily. However, since moving from their compositor to kwin, things started going off rails. I was on and off on their github pages posting and commenting on issues and what I learned is that at that time they had been pushing for solving technical debt in their codebase. But the system overall became so unstable that I was left with a choice of not updating my arch rolling install often or moving to another de. I chose the latter, moved to KDE and never had any issues anymore. No weird hack to make WiFi work, no update breaking the compositor making me have to hop between compositors. I mean, that was 2018, things might have stabilized a little. But a year ago a friend of mine, long time fan of deepin moved to KDE too because of these same stability issues. By all means try it out. But I wouldn't hold my breath.

JoshStrobl 6y ago

Long time lurker, had to create an account to post about this though. Hey folks! "Budgie is based on GTK and the GNOME Shell." To clarify, Budgie is NOT based on GNOME Shell. Budgie uses gnome-settings-daemon, GTK, and Mutter. It's written with GTK, C, and Vala, whereas GNOME Shell is written in C, St, and JavaScript. Budgie 11 isn't going to use any GNOME applications, its settings daemon, or Mutter. May not even use GTK (but rather EFL). "originally developed for the distro called Solus" It is still developed for Solus primarily. "Another nice feature is the extensions that are baked into the Budgie Extras app, shipped together with the desktop." This is part of the Ubuntu Budgie experience, not Budgie itself. "These extensions are all developed by the maintainers of the desktop environment, so breakage is not really expected." As the developer of Budgie, no these are not all developed by the maintainers. Many of them are developed by Ubuntu Budgie, whereas I use and develop on Solus. Breakage is to be expected and has occurred in the past, leading me to have to triage these issues filed against proper upstream rather than Ubuntu Budgie's extras repo. "One of these extensions is a global menu that works wonderfully, and supports all my applications" This is not one which is developed by us (Solus). "The print screen keyboard shortcuts known from GNOME don't work by default" Works under Solus.

ragnese 6y ago
I haven't followed budgie in a couple of years, but the last I understood about it, it might not be technically accurate to say it's based on GNOME *Shell*, but it's absolutely based on GNOME, the desktop stack. Just to clarify your clarification. :) Budgie can't even comfortably coexist with GNOME Shell on the same OS installation- That's how much it shares with GNOME. If you change your settings in GNOME Shell with the Settings app, it *will* affect your Budgie session. Maybe you shouldn't say it's "based off of GNOME Shell", but it's probably accurate to say that Budgie is an alternative Shell for GNOME. Also, I remember a ton of hype for Budgie 11 from years ago already. And that was when Ikey was still smashing out code for the project. I even remember Solus devs at the time saying they might never actually do version 11 because they had fixed and worked around some of the issues that they thought they wouldn't be able to in 10.4(?). So, is Budgie 11 actually going to happen?
- 6y ago

ragnese 6y ago

A couple of people are here mentioning bugs they've encountered, etc. So I'm responding with them in mind (not necessarily arguing with or against them). I had grown increasingly pessimistic with my personal computing choices. I'm into the philosophy of truly owning and controlling my stuff, so I run free operating systems exclusively on my personal machines, including my phone (to the extent that it's possible with the firmware blobs, etc). But all Linux desktops are pretty rough around the edges. It really disappointed me that I've never had a Linux machine that just worked perfectly. It was always something- xmodmap would just stop working in Plasma, settings wouldn't stick in Xfce, GNOME's sloppy focus doesn't work consistently, etc. I started to get bummed out until I've been working on this Macbook Pro for work. The stupid thing can't even keep the background images correct. First of all, you can't just say "Please use this same image/color for all desktop background on all screens." So you set every background to the same thing manually, like some kind of animal. Then you plug your laptop into your two monitors at home and one of them has the default wallpaper! Okay, so you set that one to the image you want. Great. Then you go back to the office and plug into those monitors again and one of THOSE is somehow back to the default wallpaper! It happens every time I plug back into a different set of monitors! Now I'm not pessimistic anymore! Nothing works. It's great. We're all equal. A trillion dollar company can't even make an OS that sets the wallpaper correctly (or prevent bugs where anyone can login as root, or write a calculator app that works correctly). So yeah, go give Budgie a try. It probably sucks. But you might find that it sucks in ways that are tolerable!

dcastonguay 6y ago
I alternate between a Razer 15 and a MacBook Pro that I plug into a 3 display setup and this is one of the things that is very aggravating / comically short-sighted about macOS with multiple displays. While I largely prefer using macOS, the way that Windows 10 handles desktops is much better in my opinion. I can't understand why macOS does not let you display your menu bar on all displays if you don't have "separate spaces" enabled. It seems so strange to me that throughout the entire development process no one thought it was kind of ridiculous that the user would not be able to access the menu bar of an application from the same screen the application is on. That said, I basically cross my fingers now every time I win+tab in Windows 10 because about 10-15% of the time the entire UI locks and I just have to wait 1-2 minutes before I can use my machine again. So yea, "sucking in ways that are tolerable"!

nightowl_games 6y ago

I dont like Gnome's defaults. I have the standard GNOME 2 was better mindset. Honestly its the giant app switcher thingy that comes up when you press Super. I just cant stand that. But I wanted the "it just works" aspect of Ubuntu, so I looked around and went with Ubuntu Budgie. I would have gone full solus, but I needed to run Unity3D so I stuck with Ubuntu. I think Budgie is the best looking DE for my tastes. Most things worked great, but I did have a few random problems. I had a bug in Plank where new apps wouldnt show up on it. I gave up on fixing it and switched to Linux Mint. Mint's Cinnamon and Budgie are pretty similar, and Mint just had a few more years of maturity under its belt. I'm really happy to see Solus continuing development, especially after it's original creator left the project. I'm very happy with the state of Linux DE's these days. The haters are always gonna hate but Budgie, Pantheon, Cinnamon and MATE are all light years ahead of where we were not long ago. And like other posters have mentioned, we are also witnessing a decay in the quality of MacOS. Keep up the great work Linux DE developers!

greyandgreen 6y ago
Agreed. Most DEs are well designed and work well enough. I just don't like busy UIs. I am now on Gnome on Pop!_OS because the latest Gnome, at least on Pop, seems to stay out of my way. On Fedora or other, there are so many errors that constantly present themselves. Window Maker is what I used for years until I discovered Pop. I may yet install WM on top of Pop.

birdyrooster 6y ago

It's a shame that such a beautiful operating system is being paired with that ugly font.

yboris 6y ago

Sorry if off-topic, but I just heard of a mobile-friendly "iPad style OS" called JingOS https://en.jingos.com/ https://en.jingos.com/

pdimitar 6y ago

I'm pondering installing a graphic interface on my home NAS-like Manjaro server so I can just watch my movies and shows directly through it. Last time I tried this, XFCE was quite adequate. Not much customisation or anything fancy but I don't need it for a KODI-like machine anyway. So I wonder: is Budgie a viable candidate? Screenshots around the net look really nice but I'm skeptical how lightweight is it. For example, can I play 60FPS movies? RAM usage isn't a concern; the server has 32GB of it. Apologies if all this comes off as a bit naive; I deliberately have mostly avoided Linux desktop so far and I'm now finding myself in a position when I don't know much about it.

hunterloftis 6y ago
I just moved my home desktop from Manjaro XFCE -> Ubuntu Budgie and it's significantly snappier. I don't say "faster" because I didn't do any before/after quantitative benchmarks, but my experience has been that Budgie provides a responsive UI.
- pdimitar 6y ago
  Thank you! Have you used any 60FPS user interfaces or played movies?
  - thastings 6y ago
    Actually, I'm using Ubuntu Budgie with a 120 Hz 1080p monitor, it's very responsive. Very much what you would expect these days from any desktop.
    - pdimitar 6y ago
      Very valuable feedback. Thank you!

hunterloftis 6y ago

My setup is a USB-C hub + switch that toggles my monitor/keyboard/mouse/headphones/webcam between my work (MBP) and personal (homemade frankenstein) machines. Ubuntu Budgie + https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto makes this a great experience by letting me re-use muscle memory (the key left of space + space => global menu; the furthest-left key + arrows => workspace switching).