Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
We now come to Ubuntu Budgie 22.04 LTS, the sixth and final of my reviews of the April, 2022, Ubuntu family of long term support (LTS) releases. This version is the 12th release for Ubuntu Budgie and its fourth LTS version. In fact, the very first release of Ubuntu Budgie was an LTS, in April, 2016.
As an LTS, this new release is supported for three years until April 2025.
Installation
I downloaded the .iso file from the official website via BitTorrent. At 2.7 GB, this release is actually 300 MB smaller than the last release, 21.10, although it is not clear why.
I completed a command-line SHA256 sum check on the file to confirm it was not corrupted and then dropped it onto a USB stick equipped with Ventoy 1.0.74. Ventoy allows multiple ISO files on one USB stick, limited only by the capacity of the device, and then allows choosing which one to try on boot-up. It is a great boon to users testing out a series of Linux distributions.
System requirements
The minimum system requirements for Ubuntu Budgie 22.04 LTS are a 64-bit Intel or AMD processor and 4 GB of RAM. UEFI PCs booting in CSM mode and modern Intel-based Apple Macs are also specifically supported.
New
The Budgie interface is still undergoing active development and this release uses a new version, 10.6, which brings a host of small improvements.
The project held a wallpaper competition specifically for this LTS release back in February, 2022, and grandly titled it The Ubuntu Budgie 22.04 Wallpaper Contest. It produced some nicely done wallpapers, 12 of which are included in the selection of 16 wallpapers provided. Oddly, the contest winner, while included, did not become the new default wallpaper, and instead the same one used since 19.04 remains the default. I guess the developers are fairly attached to it.
Among the many small changes, this release does include Mesa 22, the 3D graphics layer that translates graphics requests to the graphics driver, something that gamers will like.
Settings
Ubuntu Budgie 22.04 LTS does give users a wide range of choices in themes, icons and other user settings. The only drawback is that the controls for these are scattered around a number of places, including Budgie Themes and Layouts, Budgie Control Center, Budgie Desktop Settings, and Budgie Extras. It does take a while to learn where all of these settings are squirreled away.
It is in “Extras” where the desktop applets are hidden. These applets are small programs that can put weather, clocks, CPU monitors and such on your desktop. There are 37 of them provided, one more than in the last release. Many of these applets have been recently updated, too.
This release has eight available themes, also one more than last time. I guess they accumulate over time. On Ubuntu Budgie, the themes provide more than just window colors, they include a unique wallpaper and icon set to go with them. A few themes are actually installed and the rest downloaded from Personal Package Archives (PPAs).
The default theme remains Pocillo but I tried out a few of the others. Most of them are quite dark and a lot look very similar. Ubuntu Budgie is still hard to “lighten up” if you are not a fan of dark themes.
The main Budgie menu is fairly flexible, with three ways of finding applications: pages of alphabetical application tiles, categorized lists, or just typing in a search for what you are looking for. The menu can be opened by mouse-click on the top-left icon, or by hitting the “super” (i.e. Windows) key. The menu is easy and intuitive to use, and, in many ways, it is comparable to the Xubuntu Whisker Menu.
Plank is the small Budgie dock usually found bottom-center. It is actually very configurable and works well, launching applications and keeping track of which ones you have open, with a white dot for each instance.
Applications
Some of the applications included with Ubuntu Budgie 22.04 LTS are: Archive Manager (File Roller) 3.42.0 archiver Celluloid 0.20 movie player* Cheese 41.1 webcam application CUPS 2.4.1 printing system Document Viewer (Evince) 42.1 PDF viewer Document Scanner (Simple Scan) 42.0 optical scanner Drawing 0.8.5 image editor Firefox 99.0.1 web browser Gnome Calendar 41.2 desktop calendar Gnome Disks 42.0 disk manager Gnome Screenshot 41.0 screenshot tool Gnome Software 41.5 package management system Gnome System Monitor 42.0 system resource monitor Gparted 1.3.0 partition editor gThumb 3.12.0 image viewer LibreOffice 7.3.1 office suite Nemo 5.2.4 file manager PulseAudio 15.99.1 audio controller Rhythmbox 3.4.4 music player* Text Editor (gedit) 41.0 text editor Thunderbird 91.8.0 email client Tilix 1.9.4 terminal emulator Transmission 3.00 bittorrent client* * indicates same application version as used in Ubuntu Budgie 21.10 supplied as a snap, so version depends on the upstream package manager
As can be seen, most of the application suite is from the Gnome desktop. The notable exception is the Nemo file manager which is actually a fork of the standard Gnome file manager, Nautilus. Nemo restores many functions that Nautilus once had but were removed in a simplification drive a few years ago, such as file bookmarks and the “up one file level” arrow. Nemo lacks only bulk file-renaming.
The last release, Ubuntu Budgie 21.10, included the Catfish file search utility from the Xfce desktop. I noted at the time that it was an odd inclusion, as Nemo has native file searching, so I was not surprised to see that Catfish was removed from Ubuntu Budgie 22.04 LTS.
Like most other Ubuntu flavors, Ubuntu Budgie 22.04 LTS includes LibreOffice, complete less only LibreOffice Base, the infrequently-used database application. It can be installed if needed, however.
The potential controversy in the whole 22.04 LTS series of releases has been around switching the Firefox web browser from a .deb file to a snap. Mainstream Ubuntu and Ubuntu Unity made the switch in 21.10 but none of the other Ubuntu flavors did for that release. With 22.04 LTS, all have now moved to the snap version of Firefox, with some, like Xubuntu, providing a detailed list of reasons why that made sense. Ubuntu Budgie’s release notes just dryly state, “for 22.04, the deb version of Firefox has been removed since only the snap is now available.”
The default text editor is the venerable gedit from Gnome, now at version 41.0, which displays on menus simply as “text editor”. It is a simple text editor but comes with spell-checking pre-installed, a tabbed interface, and has a choice of seven different syntax highlighting color schemes – although all but two are dark schemes. It works well and is suitable for writing websites, text documents, or simple coding.
Conclusions
Ubuntu Budgie 22.04 LTS is a highly-polished and mature distribution that looks good and works well. With three years of support, this LTS will end up as many users’ desktop for the next while.
Ubuntu Budgie’s only shortcomings are its scattered controls for user settings, which will take a new user some time to master. Once located, there are a wide range of settings that can be used to personalize the Budgie desktop, although they do tend towards darker themes.
Ubuntu Budgie is aimed at new users from the Mac and Windows worlds, although it has its own Linux fanbase as well. For anyone who likes Gnome applications, but not the sort of interface found on Ubuntu, Ubuntu Budgie may be worth a serious look.
External links
Official website: https://ubuntubudgie.org/