Ubuntu Budgie is one of the most visually refined Ubuntu flavours available today. Born from a community desire to bring the elegant Budgie desktop to an Ubuntu base, it became an official Ubuntu flavour in 2017 and has steadily grown a loyal user base. For anyone who finds GNOME too minimal or KDE too complex, Ubuntu Budgie strikes a compelling middle ground.
The Budgie Desktop Experience
Budgie was originally developed for the Solus Linux project and is now maintained by the Buddies of Budgie community. On Ubuntu Budgie, the desktop ships with a traditional bottom panel layout reminiscent of macOS or a refined Windows setup — complete with a taskbar, system tray, and notification centre. The Raven sidebar is a standout feature, offering quick access to notifications, a media player control, and system applets from a single slide-out panel on the right side of the screen.
The desktop is highly customisable: users can move panels, add applets (weather, CPU usage, workspaces), change layouts, and apply themes without diving into complex configuration files. A dedicated Budgie Control Centre consolidates all settings into one coherent interface, making it approachable for newcomers transitioning from Windows or macOS.
Performance and Hardware Requirements
Ubuntu Budgie is moderately lightweight. It is not as resource-hungry as a full GNOME Shell session, but it does require more than ultra-light environments like LXQt or Openbox. On a machine with 4 GB of RAM and a modern dual-core CPU, Ubuntu Budgie performs smoothly. Cold boot times are competitive with other Ubuntu flavours, and the desktop remains snappy under typical workloads including web browsing, document editing, and media playback.
Software Availability
Because Ubuntu Budgie sits on top of Ubuntu, users benefit from the full Ubuntu software ecosystem — one of the largest in the Linux world. The Ubuntu Software Centre (GNOME Software) is available alongside APT for command-line package management. Snap packages are also pre-enabled, giving access to Canonical's curated application store. Flatpak can be easily added via a single command for even broader app coverage.
LTS and Regular Releases
Ubuntu Budgie follows Ubuntu's release cadence precisely: Long-Term Support (LTS) releases arrive every two years with five years of support, while interim releases come every six months with nine months of support. The 24.04 LTS release, codenamed Noble Numbat, brought improvements to the Budgie 10.9 desktop, updated core applications, and a smoother out-of-the-box hardware support story via the 6.8 Linux kernel.
Default Applications
The default application suite is sensibly chosen — Nemo file manager (borrowed from Linux Mint for its feature richness), Firefox as the web browser, Gedit text editor, GNOME Calendar, and Rhythmbox for music. The selection avoids bloat while covering everyday computing needs. Users can replace any application with alternatives from the repositories without issue.
Community and Support
Ubuntu Budgie benefits from both its own dedicated community forums and the vast Ubuntu support ecosystem. Official documentation is well-maintained, and questions can often be answered via Ubuntu's extensive Ask Ubuntu platform, user forums, and Reddit communities. The development team, while small, is responsive and consistently delivers quality updates aligned with Ubuntu milestones.