The open-source Budgie desktop is coming to Fedora, officially.

Joshua Strobl, the lead developer of the Budgie project, shared word of the move in a post on the Fedora sub-reddit, where he says:

I have now submitted Budgie Desktop and its microcosm of software (Budgie Control Center, Budgie Screensaver, Budgie Desktop View) for inclusion in Fedora, starting with rawhide (37) and backporting to 36. This will be maintained / supported “officially”, as I am using Fedora Silverblue + rawhide on my work laptop and will be switching my desktop over to Fedora Silverblue as well.

Joshua Strobl

Budgie is a GNOME-based desktop environment for Linux distributions. It offers a minimal yet well measured desktop experience built around a practical desktop layout and enhanced by a set of home-grown apps and utilities to configure it.

The Budgie desktop project is independent of a distro these days but is yet to be included in the Fedora repos for Fedora users to install instead of/alongside other desktop environments.

Fedora needs little introduction. Steered by Red Hat, it’s one of the leading desktop Linux distributions out there and a long-shining start in the the free software scene. Budgie is one of the better known desktop environments and sits at the heart of several well-received Linux distributions, including Solus and Ubuntu Budgie.

But if (or rather, when) this request is approved by Fedora’s team for inclusion, users will be able to install the Budgie desktop in Fedora 37 (and Fedora 36 when backported) direct from the repos, no extraneous methods necessary.

And that is just the start.

Once Budgie has feathered its nest in Fedora it’s possible that a Fedora Spin offering Budgie by default may appear. Fedora Spins for KDE, MATE, and Xfce desktop environments already exist (to name but a few). With an ardent fan-base already, users are likely to flock to an ISO of Fedora that uses the Budgie desktop instead of GNOME.

In summary, the effort to make the Budgie desktop available to users of Fedora is a fantastic one. Not only does it give Fedora users more choice, but it’ll bring the delights of Budgie to an even wider set of users which, in turn, could help spur its development further.

Let me know wha you think down in the comments section.