Just a few moments ago, Softpedia was informed by budgie-remix developers David Mohammed and Udara Madubhashana that their GNU/Linux distribution built around the Budgie desktop environment is now an official Ubuntu flavor.

That's right, after two successful major releases, budgie-remix has finally been accepted as an official Ubuntu flavor, earlier today during a meeting where four members of Canonical's Ubuntu Technical Board voted positive. There were no negative votes or abstentions. As such, we're extremely happy to inform our readers that the new Ubuntu flavor is called Ubuntu Budgie.

What is Ubuntu Budgie (formerly budgie-remix)? We'd like to tell you that it's an Ubuntu-based distribution that uses Budgie as default desktop environment. It offers the same level of quality and package selection as any other official Ubuntu flavor, but designed to be lightweight, user-friendly, simple and customizable, thanks to the Budgie desktop, which relies on the latest GNOME technologies, for now.

In April this year, when budgie-remix hit the road towards its first major release, versioned 16.04, based on the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system, we reported that David Mohammed was kind enough to inform Softpedia about the fact that he got in touch with Ubuntu MATE leader Martin Wimpress, who urged the developer to target Ubuntu 16.10 for an official status.

budgie-remix 16.10 arrived as well this fall, shortly after the release of Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak), and only now it became an Ubuntu flavor for inclusion in Ubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus). "We now move full Steam ahead and look forward to working with the Ubuntu Developer Membership Board to examine and work through the technical aspects [...] 17.04 will be our first official release under the new name," said David Mohammed in the announcement.

Budgie 11 desktop environment is coming soon to Ubuntu Budgie 16.10

Shortyl after this major announcement, the budgie-remix developers will have a lot of work on their hands with the rebranding of the entire project from the old "budgie-remix" name to Ubuntu Budgie, including the website and other components of the distribution, but we don't know yet if existing users will receive the changes.

What we know for sure is that when the Solus Project releases the Budgie 11 desktop environment for Solus users, which should happen later this year, Ubuntu Budgie users will receive the major update as well through the official channels. In the meantime, you can get yourself familiar with Ubuntu Budgie by downloading the latest release from our website.

In related news, the Ubuntu Budgie developers have recently been in talks with Solus Project's leader Ikey Doherty to ensure an effective and positive collaboration between the two teams, which means that any improvement made by Ubuntu Budgie devs to the Budgie desktop will also land for Solus users, or users of other distros using Budgie.

"I look forward to working with you all in attaining that goal of making Budgie the number one go-to desktop, and honestly, us all enjoying it on an equal peer footing, is the most important part to me," said Ikey Doherty, who is currently working hard on re-architecting the Budgie desktop environment as detailed in our exclusive story.

Ubuntu Budgie 16.10 running Budgie Desktop 10.2.8