Installing the Solus budgie-desktop on Ubuntu

There is an interesting new desktop/window-manager called Budgie-desktop that has been released this xmas time.

So if you are interested in a fiddle – some instructions for you are below.  First though – this is what the desktop looks like:

The panel is configurable – by default it is found at the top of the screen – I’ve flipped this to the bottom.

You can have multiple panels as well and rearrange the widgets available anyway you wish:

On the right is “Raven” – invoked from the tray on the right, here you can fiddle with the panel, theme (via the general settings).

The applets & notifications panel are self explanatory – but it is here you can control what is playing in your favourite media player – for example Rhythmbox:

By default the panel theme is dark – there is a light setting although the panel stays dark.  Expect themes to appear eventually.

Budgie is built upon standard gnome-shell components such as Mutter rather than forking everything under the sun like some other desktops (Cinnamon I’m talking about you!)

Its very fast, with applications logically launched from menus and accessible via the main panel – somewhat Gnome2/Mate-like but looks gorgeous.  You can search for applications like XFCE Whisper.

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How to install from source

I’ve compiled this on Ubuntu 16.04 – in theory this should also work on 15.10 but I haven’t tried – let me know if it does not.

Compiling the stable recommended source – v10.2.2

sudo apt-get -y install libglib2.0-dev libgtk-3-dev libpeas-dev libpulse-dev libgnome-desktop-dev libmutter-dev libgnome-menu-3-dev libwnck-dev libupower-glib-dev libtool valac uuid-dev libgnome-desktop-3-dev gsettings-desktop-schemas-dev intltool libwnck-3-dev libpolkit-agent-1-dev libpolkit-gobject-1-dev

cd Downloads

wget https://github.com/solus-project/budgie-desktop/releases/download/v10.2.2/budgie-desktop-10.2.2.tar.xz

tar -Jxvf budgie-desktop-10.2.2.tar.xz

cd budgie-desktop-10.2.2

gedit configure.ac

search and replace “110” with “105” – save and close gedit

aclocal

autoreconf

./configure --prefix=/usr

make

sudo make install

sudo apt-get install mutter gnome-settings-daemon gnome-control-center gnome-shell-common gnome-themes-standard-data gnome-session

Compiling the upstream development source – note this can be unstable:

sudo apt-get -y install build-essential git
git clone https://github.com/solus-project/budgie-desktop.git
cd budgie*

sudo apt-get -y install libglib2.0-dev libgtk-3-dev libpeas-dev libpulse-dev libgnome-desktop-dev libmutter-dev libgnome-menu-3-dev libwnck-dev libupower-glib-dev libtool valac uuid-dev libgnome-desktop-3-dev gsettings-desktop-schemas-dev intltool libwnck-3-dev libpolkit-agent-1-dev libpolkit-gobject-1-dev

./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr

make

sudo make install

sudo apt-get install mutter gnome-settings-daemon gnome-control-center gnome-shell-common gnome-themes-standard-data gnome-session

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How to launch budgie-desktop

Basically, logout, select budgie-desktop from the login screen and have fun

I would recommend you also install gnome-tweak-tool and use the dark-theme option.

If you want to install the Solus artwork then try the following:

git clone https://github.com/solus-project/artwork.git
cd artwork
aclocal
automake --add-missing
autoconf

./configure --prefix=/usr
make
sudo make install

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Note – I’ve made some progress creating a Debian package for this – it compiles, installs but Budgie does not display at all.  If you wish to help develop this so that we can have a PPA for everyone please shout.

(11 Jan 16) remove pesky commas from source install