Cheep, cheep! A brand new version of the open-source Budgie desktop environment is available.

Budgie 10.3 is the latest release of the Budgie desktop, and the Ubuntu Budgie team has blogged a little bit about the changes it brings.

Firstly, don’t get excited; although Budgie is to become a Qt5-based desktop in the near future this latest release is GTK-based. As such this release may be the final major update to the the 10.x series. That said, I expect we’ll also see a few bug fix point releases in this series, so don’t think it totally abandoned.

Budgie 10.3 Features

Budgie 10.3 features a new and improved Alt + Tab experience. This keyboard friendly app switcher is now faster, neater and more reliable. It also looks really good too.

The music player in the Raven sidebar is a thing of beauty, and thanks to some Mpris tweaks the applet no longer suffers from a duplicate artwork download issue, something which affected some music players.

The Clock Applet offers a couple of customization options, such as showing the time 24 hour clock and displaying the current date.

Various Budgie applets pick up bug fixes, including support for encrypted volumes and remote (S/FTP, SMB) shares in the Places applet.

Finally, Budgie Settings now lets you move window controls to the right or the left (depending on your tastes).

Install Budgie Desktop on Ubuntu

Ubuntu 17.04

Ubuntu Budgie 17.04 users, as well as other Zesty-based flavor, can install Budgie 10.3 on Ubuntu by adding the Budgie Backports PPA to their software sources:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntubudgie/backports

sudo apt update && sudo apt install budgie-desktop budgie-indicator-applet

Logout and back in for the update to take effect.

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS & 16.10

If you’re running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS or 16.10 and already have the Budgie Remix PPA added you’ll receive an update to the latest Budgie desktop release through the desktop update mechanism.

If you don’t have the PPA on your system, but want to install this latest release, you’ll need to add it.

Pop open a new Terminal window and run:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:budgie-remix/ppa

sudo apt update && sudo apt install budgie-desktop budgie-artwork

I must warn that this PPA contains a newer version of Nautilus than that which is available in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. If you do not wish to upgrade Nautilus — for the sake of stability, you shouldn’t — remove the Budgie Remix PPA after adding and installing the Budgie desktop.

Keep in mind that other packages in this PPA (should you install them) affect the rest of your system (e.g., rebranding the boot screen, changing the default settings, installing additional wallpapers, etc.

Budgie 10.3 is available to users of the Solus Linux distribution right now, and available in the AUR for Arch Linux users.