Budgie 10.10 Desktop Releasing This Quarter As Wayland-Only

For fans of the Budgie desktop environment that got its start out of the Solus Linux distribution, the Budgie 10.10 release expected later this quarter will be their first release that is Wayland-only.

Joshua Strobl with the Budgie project published their 2024 review and a look ahead with goals for 2025. The biggest takeaway is that Budgie 10.10 coming later in Q1 will be Wayland-only:

"We are currently intent on shipping Budgie 10.10 within Q1 2025 (Jan-Mar), however as always we won't ship it unless we consider it ready (at least as ready as we can test). Budgie 10.10 will ship with the recommendation and default of using labwc, providing us more time to bake an excellent compositor that we can swap out at any time across Budgie 10 or 11! In case it wasn't clear to some readers, Budgie 10.10 will be Wayland-only. In git, it has been Wayland-only since July 2024. We will not support both X11 and Wayland."

Unfortunately though Budgie 10.10 will be too late for including with this spring's Ubuntu 25.04 and Fedora 42 releases.

Following the Budgie 10.10 release, development will focus to the Budgie 11 desktop with many big improvements anticipated.

More details on the Budgie accomplishments for 2024 and plans for 2025 via BuddiesOfBudgie.org.