Budgie is really worth a try

A story of reaching GUI paradise

No blog concerned with Linux would be complete without some content discussing the state of the Linux desktop, so here's my take on the topic. No matter how hard I tried, I could never efficiently distro hop away from Ubuntu's derivatives. Reason number one is that I almost exclusively use laptops with Optimus graphics, and without system76-power, this can get very frustrating rather fast on Debian or Fedora, my other go-to choices if I manage to get them to work. My other reason for sticking with Ubuntu is currently much stronger: numerous packages I use and rely on daily are not available or are outdated on other platforms. I would easily spend a few hours getting the hardware working, if I could to all the things on it using other distros. As of now, no matter how unhappy I may be about some controversial things Canonical does, their package manager works for me.

And in the end of the day, what is a distro? These days, a distro is more or less a package manager backed by the corresponding repositories, everything else is nearly universal. The other component that used to make a given distribution special, the desktop environment, is just a simple choice of choosing the version right for your taste. Want GNOME? Plasma? MATE? The big distros, the likes of Fedora, Debian, Arch, and their derivatives offer almost all them. The concepts of user interaction do not make distros stand out. Maybe the elementary OS guys are trying something here, but let's get back to that a bit later. A choice of distribution is mostly governed by the packages shipped and the pace that they are updated at, and that's a different story. The question in this case is the desktop environment one runs on that distro.

GNOME

I've been desktop hopping for years now. GNOME looks elegant, polished and well-thought-out – if you intend to use it just the way it was intended. Suppose you want to change the first day of the week using some kind of user interface. Well, your best bet is an extension that can be downloaded from https://extensions.gnome.org/, called Weeks Start on Monday Again... If you'd like to change the active audio devices from the top panel, you will need two more extensions: one for the input and one for the output devices. This is okay for little extra features that add bells and whistles to your personal experience, but it is very not okay for basic, honestly, expected features of a desktop environment in 2021. This reliance on extensions is what always drives me away from GNOME. It has a good concept, but if someone is not a fan of juggling numerous virtual desktops, the vanilla experience falls apart rather quickly without these tweaks. There are plans in GNOME 40 for a more streamlined solution for extension management. This is a step in the right direction, because some extensions tend to break between versions, but it's not here yet.
However, I have no intention to be unfair. There is one incredibly powerful characteristic of the way GNOME handles virtual desktops. Misbehaving full screen applications (games, most often than not) tend to make any desktop unresponsive, except for GNOME: pressing Super always brings up the Activities screen, and full screen applications are treated just like any regular old window in this view. If one is frozen, it can be moved to a different virtual desktop and killed from a terminal or a task manager without affecting anything else. A neat approach, still unmatched by other desktop environments.

KDE Plasma

As a true desktop hopper, KDE Plasma is a must try. I'm a fan of KDE Connect and regularly use numerous applications utilizing Qt, so every six months or so I end up trying Kubuntu (or sometimes KDE Neon). I always end up breaking it in some weird way, no matter how hard I try not to. The problem is with me, I am sure. Nevertheless, for those few days the well implemented global menu, the powerful search tool–app launcher–calculator KRunner and the deeply integrated theming and extension management altogether provide a pleasant experience. Except for one thing: the depth of customization always makes me feel like I still have work to do on my Plasma setup, it never actually feels finished or done. This feeling is also exaggerated by the fact that no GTK window feels really right on Plasma with any other theme than the default, Breeze. Not even with the exact same theme (in my case, WhiteSur, which is a very carefully crafted one) set for both Qt and GTK applications. In comparison, GTK desktops always play nicely with Qt as well.

To sum up, GNOME provides excellent stability but it's way too far from being actually integrated. KDE Plasma, on the other hand, is really integrated, everything is in there in one package, but the truly open customizability comes at the cost of polish.

Pantheon (elementary OS)

Before I move on to the star of the show, the Budgie Desktop, I must include one additional environment. That's the minimalistic and elegant Pantheon of elementary OS. That project made me admit that Apple got the concept of a desktop environment just right, and there is no shame in replicating that design in our Linux systems. However, no matter how truly beautiful when looking at it first, elementary OS is not a very good environment for work. The biggest problem is their concept for Alt-Tabbing between windows. The user sees only one window on top, and Plank shows all others on the bottom, but not in any particular order. Switching focus between two open windows also causes a distracting flash, because for the moment of switching, one window disappears to let the other show up, even though they were both open side by side. Perfect for eye-candy, not so perfect for productivity.

For my own workflow, I found a solution to all of this.

Budgie

Ubuntu Budgie features the Budgie Desktop environment, developed for Solus, but also provided by Arch, Manjaro, Debian and openSUSE. So if you happen to use Linux already, I would wholeheartedly encourage you to give it a try. Here's why.

Budgie is based on GTK. As I explained earlier, this enables very good visual compatibility with both GTK and Qt applications. Another nice feature included in Ubuntu Budgie is the extensions that are baked into the Budgie Extras app, shipped together with the desktop. One of these extensions is a global menu that works wonderfully, and supports all my applications, including LibreOffice, Veusz and Brave. There are predefined panel layouts, including ones that closely resemble the Windows way of thinking, and ones that are close to macOS, and thus, elementary OS. By choosing the latter and applying the WhiteSur GTK theme, my perfect desktop was almost ready. By default, the icon sizes in the dock, Plank, were a bit small for my liking, but that was also a quick fix in the Plank Preferences app. The end result looks surprisingly similar to elementary OS, a look I am fond of, and the global menu is a big plus over the actual elementary experience. After manually enabling window previews, Alt+Tab behaves as expected: it cycles through previews from all of the open windows. Sadly, the print screen keyboard shortcuts known from GNOME don't work by default on Ubuntu Budgie, but they do on Solus. A handy extension is included though, and it enables the same functionality with a single mouse click. Even a built-in audio device switcher is available by default in Raven panel on the right. The only limitation of Budgie that stands out to me is the handling of full screen applications: if one freezes, getting out of it might require some fiddling with tty's (Ctrl+Alt+Fn). Other than that, it does everything I need, and keeps a very healthy balance between tweakability and minimalism.

Choosing one of elementary's wallpapers for this screenshot is just a fun icing on the cake to really drive my point home about similarity. The icon theme is Moka by the way, it's included in Ubuntu Budgie.

Proposal

So what's the point of this lengthy comparison? If you ask me, the Budgie Desktop could easily replace GNOME as the so-called "default desktop environment" in Linux distros. It does almost everything GNOME does, sometimes even more, and supports both GTK and Qt applications incredibly well: with the global menu in the top panel, no space is wasted in either type of application. Of course, this is only true if we follow the Cupertino way, but the Redmond-style layout is just as functional, if that's what you're after. A Unity-like look can be chosen too, so this environment can truly resemble any kind of desktop concept you could be after. Budgie is also much lighter on RAM usage than GNOME. I've seen my GNOME install exceed 2.5 GBs on idle, while Budgie tends to hover around 1.8 GB, even with some light applications running.

The main point of all this is that having a well integrated desktop environment capable of easily replicating anything else on the market is a gem. Budgie seems a bit underrated, considering its stability and well-crafted functionality. You truly should give it a try, no matter what OS you are running currently.

GNOME has become quite the standard these days, despite its tendency towards sometimes unhelpful oversimplification. Budgie's whatever you wish for approach may help newcomers more in getting used to Linux by giving them just the right layout from their previous system, and help them start a journey towards new looks without messing up their config files or their system.

Acknowledgement

The beauty of the FOSS ecosystem is that anyone can come in and make something new. I am incredibly thankful for all the incredible work and effort put into the projects mentioned in this post. My gripes are mine only and mean no harm. The main idea here is that Budgie also deserves a place among the big guys.

The original post contained some inaccurate info about Budgie, these have been edited.

–Thomas Hastings (read more)

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Pub: 10 Feb 2021 20:08 UTC
Edit: 11 Feb 2021 18:30 UTC
Views: 24819