Changes/FedoraBudgie

Fedora Budgie Spin

Summary

Creation of an official Fedora Spin shipping the Budgie Desktop environment.

Owner

• Name: Joshua Strobl
• Primary Contact Person: Joshua Strobl
• Email: joshua@buddiesofbudgie.org

Current status

• Targeted release: Fedora Linux 38
• Last updated: 2023-01-04
• devel thread
• FESCo issue: #2921
• Tracker bug: #2158236
• Release notes tracker: #945

Detailed Description

Budgie Desktop is a well-known desktop environment originally developed by the Solus operating system and currently developed under the Buddies of Budgie organization. Budgie Desktop is available through popular operating systems such as Arch Linux, EndeavourOS, Ubuntu Budgie, Solus, and Ultramarine Linux.

Budgie Desktop’s goal is to be a feature-rich and modern desktop that provides unique ways of interacting with the system (such as the widget and notification center Raven) while being approachable to many users with its default more traditional look and feel. Budgie Desktop is extensible through its own plugin architecture and offers a variety of customization options to enable users and partners (e.g. Ubuntu Budgie) to make it their own.

Budgie Desktop and its respective components (Budgie Desktop View, Budgie Control Center, Budgie Screensaver) is officially maintained by Joshua Strobl, the lead of the Buddies of Budgie organization and a newly proposed Budgie SIG . Budgie Desktop was introduced in Fedora 37. A Fedora Budgie Spin would be a valuable addition to Fedora’s existing spins, providing Budgie Desktop users with the ability to use their favorite desktop environment with a leading operating system.

Feedback

Feedback to the prospect of a Fedora Budgie has been positive and there has been demand for years for easy access to Budgie Desktop on Fedora.

Ask Fedora

Budgie Desktop on Fedora has been sought after for years, for example on the following posts:

• Budgie Desktop on Fedora
• Budgie for Fedora 33?

Linux Journalism

• "In any case, the Budgie desktop coming to Fedora is good news. It gives more options to the Fedora user and Budgie is a pretty sleet desktop. People who like both Fedora and Budgie should be able to enjoy the best of the both worlds." - It's FOSS
• "In summary, the effort to make the Budgie desktop available to users of Fedora is a fantastic one. Not only does it give Fedora users more choice, but [it will] bring the delights of Budgie to an even wider set of users which, in turn, could help spur its development further." - OMG Linux

Reddit

In a thread posted about the submission of Budgie Desktop to Fedora as well as the goal to eventually create a Fedora Budgie Spin, the following was provided as feedback:

• "This is fantastic news! Fedora + Budgie is such a great match <3"
• "Hey Josh! I moved from Solus to Fedora recently. But I do miss Budgie quite a bit. Thanks for doing this."
• "Congratulations! Fedora Linux with Budgie will be awesome."
• "I would love to try a dedicated spin of budgie fedora, and would even be willing to try a silverblue based spin too"

Benefit to Fedora

As with the support of other Fedora Spins, this change benefits end users who run or wish to run Fedora on their personal computing devices (laptop / desktop) with their preferred desktop environment. These users may be coming from other operating systems that have a slower iterative process, lack modern hardware support, or are missing the large community and support network that Fedora offers.

Providing Budgie Desktop through a Budgie Spin would align with Fedora’s common values of Features and First. Fedora prides itself on its ability to closely collaborate with “upstreams” and empowering a “wide spectrum of millions of users, administrators, and developers worldwide”. Budgie Desktop shares a User-centric “Core Value” that puts users at the center of how we shape Budgie Desktop. Fedora’s ability to collaborate with and lead the charge on technical innovation would benefit the development of Budgie Desktop going into the future and Budgie Desktop’s perspective on desktop experiences could help shape the evolution of personal computing under Fedora as well.

A Fedora Budgie Spin would provide a better initial experience for Fedora users that is more aligned with the “stock” or “promoted defaults” experience by Budgie Desktop. Currently, end users that wish to use Budgie Desktop on Fedora must install Fedora Workstation (due to the extensive overlap between the GNOME “Stack” components offered in Workstation and that of Budgie) and apply changes to get an experience more aligned with the recommendations offered by the external documentation.

A Fedora Budgie Spin would reduce the extraneous packages that come with Fedora Workstation that are not needed as part of the Budgie Desktop experience, provide consistent iconography and desktop theming, and reduce potential headaches associated with the multi-step process of getting Budgie Desktop on Fedora.

Scope

• Proposal owners:
  • SIG request: #11049
  • comps: #787
  • fedora-release-budgie: #240
  • kickstart: #929
  • livesys-scripts: #6

• Other developers: N/A

• Release engineering: #11184

• Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)

• Trademark approval: #428

• Alignment with Objectives: N/A (not needed for this Change)

Upgrade/compatibility impact

There is no upgrade / compatibility impact from the Spin.

How To Test

To test the Budgie Spin:

1. Boot the Fedora Budgie ISO image either on bare-metal or in a virtual machine.
2. Confirm successful boot into the Budgie Desktop environment.
3. Launch Anaconda installer from the Budgie Menu (accessible in the left corner of the bottom panel or pressing Super / Windows key) or from the desktop icon.
4. Confirm no issues with Budgie Desktop Settings (used for personalizing Budgie Desktop). Budgie Desktop should have consistent iconography through Papirus Icon Theme and “legacy GTK applications” should be using Materia GTK Theme. Confirm functional Budgie Control Center (display configuration panel for example).
5. Confirm functional system tray.
6. Confirm functional and accessible Raven (pressing Super / Windows key + A or Super / Windows key + N).

User Experience

Users are able to consume Budgie Desktop from https://spins.fedoraproject.org instead of installing another desktop environment and manually installing and configuring Budgie Desktop. The Fedora Budgie Spin will be as minimal as possible, offering the following:

• A core set of applications e.g. GNOME Software for updates and package management, file manager, text editor, terminal, and web browser.
• Consistent GTK theming through Materia GTK Theme and iconography through Papirus Icon Theme - facilitated by gschema overrides.
• Recommended Budgie Desktop components (Budgie Desktop itself, Budgie Desktop View for desktop icon support, Budgie Control Center, and Budgie Screensaver for locking)
• lightdm + slick-gtk-greeter for a more refined greeter experience

Dependencies

TBD

Contingency Plan

• Contingency Mechanism: If a blocker bug comes up that breaks composes of the Budgie Spin for Fedora 38, the Change can be bumped to a future Fedora release (e.g. F39).
• Contingency Deadline: 2023-02-21
• Blocks release? No

Documentation

None

N/A (not a System Wide Change)

Release Notes

This release introduces the Fedora Budgie Spin. The Fedora Budgie Spin aims to provide the premiere Budgie Desktop experience on top of Fedora Linux, the leading edge platform for developers and users alike.