budgie-remix preview 2 is available

budgie-remix tech-preview 2 is now available for download to test, get feedback etc.

Please DO read the README.  This is labeled a tech-preview – it is not production ready and should not be installed if you want to use budgie in the long-term.

Next up will be beta 1 at the end of March – this will be production ready.

So what is different from tech-preview 1?

Well this has been correctly engineered – the previous effort was all hand-cranked.  Tech-preview 2  is all been debianized – built by launchpad and most importantly – can be reproducibly built for now and the long-term.

For this tech-preview budgie-remix is using lightdm as the login-manager.  The picture shows what budgie-remix could look like.

Help needed – we need a logo for the login box

The previous tech-preview could not  be installed.  Tech-preview 2 can be – please refer to the README on how you can do this.

On logging in by default the wallpaper is the same as the login screen:

Help-needed – we need public domain/ cc attribution licensed wallpaper (that allows distribution) – guidance (taken from Ubuntu Flickr):

We’re looking for photographic wallpapers: lovely backgrounds that greet the user on budgie-remix welcome screen and at login, and complements the arc-theme. Like Ubuntu call for action – We’re also looking for an illustrative wallpaper that plays off the theme “xenial xerus”.

* Images shouldn’t be too busy and filled with too many shapes and colors, a similar tone throughout is a good rule of thumb.
* A single point of focus, a single area that draws the eye into the image, can also help you avoid something too cluttered.
* Try your image at different aspect ratios to make sure something important isn’t cropped out on smaller/ larger screens at different resolutions.
* Take a look at the wallpapers guidance on the Ubuntu Wiki regarding the size of images. Our target resolution is 3840 x 2400.

Break all the rules except the resolution one! 😀

Network Monitor applet now appears correctly:

As this is a tech-preview budgie-remix has included with the live cd the gnome-shell like dashboard xfdashboard

You can see all your apps running very easily…

… and you can switch between workspaces simply – dragging apps from the main pane to the workspace as well.

Help-needed: Somone who can help out integrating xfdashboard i.e. theme it, set the key-combination on first logon)

Look at the README how to hook this up to a keyboard combination e.g. CTRL+TAB.  If there is sufficient good feedback, budgie-remix will include this as default in the upcoming beta correctly integrated.

Plymouth is the default boot loader: Help needed – we need someone who can change “Ubuntu 16.04” to “budgie-remix 16.04”

Hidden in the background is printer support – hplip dependency has been added.

Help-needed: testing this

We also want feedback as to what other back-end software should be included out of the box

The next article will describe where the project is hiding on the interweb, how you can contribute.