Beautiful Budgie Desktop Environment Gets Major Update – Gallery

The developer of Evolve OS, Ikey Doherty, announced that a new version of the Budgie desktop has been released and users can now test it freely, either in this one distro or in Ubuntu.

Both Evolve OS and Budgie desktop environment are still under development and it's difficult to pinpoint when they will become officially available, but from the looks of it, that date can't be too far into the future.

For now, users can take a closer look at the Budgie desktop, which has been updated yet again. It's now at version 8 and the developer has made quite a few improvements.

Before testing Budgie, you need to remember that this has been built from scratch. It's not a fork from anything, although it's capable of using some of the packages that are already present in the system.

In Ubuntu for example, users will have access to the Nautilus file manager, which is from the GNOME stack. This is where the resemblance ends and pretty much everything else is very different from what you would expect.

Budgie is not your regular cup of tea

The Linux ecosystem is host to many desktop environments and most users have tried the bigger ones. It's difficult to get surprised because between so many options, it's unlikely that some developer will think of something that everyone ignored. That is actually true for Budgie and users will find that there are some interesting ideas implemented in this new desktop solution.

"We added a whole bunch of options for the Budgie Menu to the panel preferences, enabling you to use the traditional layout we used with the Budgie Menu, or indeed stick with the new version that doesn't employ categories. We've visually refreshed the run dialog and menu, with a much simpler and intuitive (not to mention more responsive) feel to everything. Interaction played a huge part this time round, with the menu now sorting items by usage, saving you a lot of time!"

"We have auto hide support, a new dark look, application pinning (pin apps as launchers to the panel), dynamic support for GNOME Panel theming, a menubar applet, cleaned up the animations... and a whole bunch more!" said Ikey Doherty in the announcement.

You can give Evolve OS a try right now, but you can also use PPA for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 14.10. Just enter a few commands in the terminal in order to get it right now (root access is needed):