Budgie
A sleek, modern desktop with a clean panel and sane defaults out of the box.
Budgie aims for the sweet spot between GNOME\'s minimalism and a traditional desktop\'s practicality. Born at Solus and now developed by the Buddies of Budgie project, it pairs a clean single panel and menu with Raven, a slide-out sidebar unifying notifications, media controls, and quick settings in one place.
The design philosophy is "sane by default": attractive without configuration, familiar without cloning anyone, and light enough for ordinary hardware. Budgie 10 continues maturing on GTK while the project plans its longer-term Wayland-native future. It is a tasteful middle path that many users find exactly right on first boot.
Strengths
- Clean, modern look that needs zero setup to be pleasant.
- Raven sidebar: notifications and controls in one elegant place.
- Familiar enough for switchers, fresh enough to feel current.
- Moderate footprint: lighter than GNOME, fuller than Xfce.
- Available across many distros (Solus, Ubuntu Budgie, Fedora).
Watch-outs
- Smaller development team than the giant desktops.
- Wayland support is still on the roadmap; X11 today.
- Customization depth is intentionally shallower than Plasma's.
Standout features
- Raven: the most polished notification/control center idea outside GNOME.
- Sane-defaults philosophy that respects new users' time.
- Solus pedigree: designed as a first-class desktop, not a fork.
- Budgie Desktop Settings make its options approachable.
Who it's for
Best for
People who want a modern, good-looking desktop that is right out of the box with minimal fiddling.Maybe not for
Deep customizers and Wayland-first adopters, for now.The Budgie player profile
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Distros that ship it
Signature moves
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