budgie-remix 16.10 released

I’m very pleased to announce the release of budgie-remix based on the solid 16.10 Ubuntu foundations.

For the uninitiated, budgie-remix utilises the wonderful budgie-desktop graphical interface from the Solus team.

This is our first release following the standard Ubuntu release cycle – alphas, betas, release candidates.  Certainly eventful with this release we are very proud with the results.

The level of interest has been spectacular – a growing number of contributors, offers of help – so much so we just could not incorporate everything!

With a dynamic team and community developers & testers we are certain we have a good future ahead of us.  Roll on 17.04.

Just a few thanks – there too many people to individually thank – but you know who you are – so three cheers to you.

• Our Debian reviewers – Adam Borowski & Gianfranco Costamagna
• Our Ubuntu reviewers – Jeremy Bicha & Daniel Holbach
• Ikey Doherty
• Rob Peters and all the budgie-remix bug-busters – massive thanks for your detailed testing effort.
• Ossian Mapes – we will definitely be looking to showcase your budgie-remix lightdm webkit2 greeter in the future!
• The budgie-remix team Udara, Niyas, Joshua, Hexcube, Nikola,  Mikl
• Our financial supporters
• Our exponentially growing community who have embraced us on all social media – twitter, reddit, G+, Facebook

Read the official release announcement here.  Downloads are here.

budgie-remix 16.10 beta 2

The very latest budgie-remix distro based on the firm 16.10 Ubuntu foundations is now available for testers.

More details available on the project-page – and download links are available from sourceforge.

I have submitted many of the budgie-remix key packages to Debian and these are now available direct from the Yakkety repositories:

• budgie-desktop,
• Moka icon theme,
• Faba icon theme,
• arc-theme.

Similarly, Ubuntu has accepted our budgie-artwork and budgie-wallpaper (xenial) packages as well.

We look forward to working with the Ubuntu devs and hopefully our remaining packages of budgie-remix will be accepted in 17.04 – budgie-desktop-environment, budgie-welcome, budgie-wallpaper (yakkety) and arc-firefox-theme.

In the interim – these are available from the budgie-remix PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:budgie-remix/ppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt install budgie-desktop-environment

 

Rhythmbox Alternative-Toolbar goes dark…

Taking some time-out from budgie-remix matters, I’ve released an update to my plugin for rhythmbox called alternative-toolbar.

For those not in the know, this plugin gives rhythmbox a stylish makeover – introduces a compact bar for most desktops and a headerbar for GNOME based desktops.

In this release the following changes have been made:

• Option for dark theme
• Display Browse Categories horizontally or vertically
• Display app-menu correctly in budgie-desktop
• Updated translations from Launchpad.net
• correctly toggle search button via CTRL+F
• option to force the display of the app-menu if required

For a full list of extras that are available for rhythmbox users via this plugin have a look a the README.

But lets have some pretty pictures to explain what’s new.

Dark-theme – For those that like their media players with a dark-style there is a new option in the plugin-preferences.

Normally Rhythmbox displays its filter options above the music.  For those of us without much vertical space to play with this doesnt allow us to see as much music in the grid-list.  This new option allows for the filter options to be displayed on the left hand-side of the music list making much more use of a normal widescreen display.

For budgie-desktop users you may have noticed that the App-menu was not displayed in the same position as other GNOME apps … well that’s been fixed.

… and as an aside, there is a gsettings value to force the display of the app-menu if required.

The search button is now correctly toggle-able via the CTRL+F keystroke.

This version has also been accepted into Debian – so Yakkety users will see the plugin in the main repo soon.

For all 14.04, 15.10 and 16.04 users this version can be installed via my rhythmbox-plugins PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:fossfreedom/rhythmbox-plugins
sudo apt update
sudo apt install rhythmbox-plugin-alternative-toolbar

 

budgie-remix … the apps

Choosing the default applications for a distro is contentious – you can never please everyone.  Fortunately with Ubuntu as its base – you can change/add/delete anything with ease.

For those testing an installed version of tech-preview beta 2 (keep updating!)  these are the current default applications budgie-remix probably (emphasis on probably) ship with.  Let me know your thoughts.

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Themes:

By default budgie-remix ships with Arc-Theme from Horst3180 – this includes firefox styled with Arc theme .  Also available is Horst3180 Vertex Theme which is equally impressive with the budgie-desktop

Accessories:

• Files (Nautilus) is shipping with v3.18 not v3.14 as in base Ubuntu.  This is combined with GNOME Sushi – nice piece of software to view the contents of what you have highlighted – just press the Space bar
• GNOME calculator
• Gnote – note taking software EDIT: GNote has removed system tray capabilities so does not integrate with budgie-desktop
  
• Main Menu (Alacarte EDIT: MenuLibre) – allows customisation of the menu
• GNOME Photos
• Gedit Text Editor
• EDITL GNOME Calendar

Games:

• Solitaire
• Mahjongg
• Mines
• Sudoku

Installing the package gnome-games has two dozen games to choose from – the chosen four are those that Ubuntu has selected as the default.

Graphics:

• Simple Scan
• EDIT: GThumb image viewer

Internet:

• Chromium Webbrowser EDIT: Now removed
• Firefox Web-browser customised with the Arc Darker firefox theme
• Transmission BitTorrent client

Not decided yet (but leaning toward firefox) on the default browser … ship with both?

Office:

• Libreoffice with sifr as the default toolbar style

Sound & Video:

• Rhythmbox customised with Alternative Toolbar and Tray-icon for controlling via the panel
• Video Player (Totem)

Sundry:

• Orca Screen Reader
• Power Statistics

System Tools:

• GNOME Control Centre Settings
• GNOME Software Centre

Administration:

• Ubuntu Software Updater

Preferences:

• Startup Applications
• Additional Drivers
• GNOME Disks
• GNOME Online Accounts

Utilities:

• Archive Manager (file-roller)
• Evince PDF Document Viewer
• Image Viewer (eog)
• GNOME Screenshot
• GNOME Terminal

EDIT: TLP is included by default – this will enhance the battery life for laptop uses.

EDIT:… and xfdashboard is available as an optional install (sudo apt install budgie-xfdashboard) – press CTRL+TAB – this gives a gnome-shell like dashboard

Developing for budgie-remix

Getting started with developing with budgie-remix

budgie-remix is hosted on GitHub for development.  For anyone who wishes to contribute to the development of budgie-remix, this article is the starting point.

It consists of a number of sub-projects – some are still work in progress.  Obviously the number of sub-projects will grow as the project matures – below is the current structure:

budgie-desktop-environment is the starting point for the distro.  It is a meta package consists of two parts:

• Depends: this installs all the necessary packages building upon the mini.iso  minimal Ubuntu install.
• Recommends: this installs all the desktop packages like rhythmbox which the end-users see and use out of the box.

budgie-desktop is the upstream budgie desktop itself together with any Ubuntu specific patches

budgie-remix-lightdm-theme configures the LightDM theme and live CD autologin configuration files.

In the Debian package itself it has the gsettings override file central to budgie-remix; all the key customisation settings are done here:

• rhythmbox
• fonts
• nautilus
• screensaver and desktop background initial wallpaper

budgie-xfdashboard configures xfdashboard for budgie; defines a theme together with initial defaults per user autostarted on logon

budgie-isohelper contains stuff to create an iso:

• reworked PinguyBuilder deb package stripped of unnecessary dependencies together with a base config file.

arc-theme is the upstream arc-theme together with the Debian package to install it.

plymouth-theme is the budgie-remix plymouth files displayed when booting

budgie-wallpapers consists of wallpaper jpegs including the key screensaver and desktop background wallpaper file itself

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The whole project is built upon the mini iso

1. Connect the downloaded ISO to virtualbox
2. Boot and accept all the defaults – no desktop is installed
3. Install budgie-remix as follows

sudo apt-get install -y software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:fossfreedom/testbudgie
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y budge-desktop-environment

The PPA testbudgie are development packages.  The PPA budgie-desktop are the release packages

That’s it – simple!

Feel free to contact me with any suggestions – contact me via google+ or hit the contact page (please use a real email address!) and I’ll reply as soon as I can.