A new desktop environment preview release, Budgie 10.10-preview.1, has been published by the BuddiesOfBudgie project. This release completely deprecated support for X11, leaving only the ability to work in environments based on the Wayland protocol. Alongside this release, similar test releases were generated for related components such as the session manager Budgie Session (a fork of gnome-session), a set of icons in Budgie Desktop View, the interface for configuring the system in Budgie Control Center (a fork of GNOME Control Center), display configurator Budgie Display Configurator, and a set of services in Budgie Desktop Services. The project code is distributed under the GPLv2 license.
This release is notable for achieving parity in the functionality of applets when using Wayland compared to the old X11-based environment. It has also improved the MenuManager and stabilized the new interface for setting screen parameters. For the composite server, it is recommended to use labwc based on the wlroots library. However, the Budgie 11 branch plans to add support for Kwin and composite servers on the Mir library database.
One of the dependencies required for assembly is the libxfce4windowing library, which implements a layer independent of the graphics system with window controls. To create the panel and desktop components, the gtk-layer-shell library is used, which utilizes GTK3 and the Wayland Layer Shell protocol.
Following the release of Budgie 10.10, the 10.x branch will transition to maintenance mode, allowing only bug fixes. All resources will be directed towards the development of the Budgie 11 branch. This branch is notable for its separation of desktop functionality from the layer that provides visualization and output of information. This separation will enable abstraction of the code from specific graphical toolkits and libraries.