A look at Ubuntu 18.04 Budgie

I’ve been really wanting to like Budgie, but haven’t had the best experiences with using it on various systems, as you can read in my look at Solus and an attempt at Manjaro; but when I installed Ubuntu Budgie, I found almost complete harmony.

Installation of Ubuntu Budgie was straightforward and there isn’t any sense in getting too deep into it.

However, I would like to explicitly point out something I saw in the installation process that I absolutely loved, and that was the inclusion of a choice between a minimal, or a normal installation.

The installation says that the minimal installation includes “Web browser and basic utilities” whereas the normal installation is what you would come to expect, Office, browser, music/video applications, etc.

So, if you just want to start with the basics or have little storage space on the device, start with minimal.

You can download Ubuntu Budgie from the official website. Note that it is recommended to pick 18.04 or whichever release is the newest and not one of the older releases still available for download as the support period is much too short for these releases.

As far as requirements go, the developers state that Ubuntu Budgie runs ideal on computers with at least 2 Gigabytes of RAM (32-bit) or 4 Gigabytes of RAM (64-bit).

Look and Feel

Ubuntu Budgie, is gorgeous. Easily the most attractive (in my opinion) distribution I have come across, in its default appearence. The animations, the wallpaper, the inclusion of the Plank dock on the left side of the screen, the themes...Everything is gorgeous. If you’re someone who enjoys eyecandy, you won’t be disappointed.

The one thing that killed my experience with using Budgie as a desktop environment in the past, was the sluggishness I had encountered. I’m happy to say that’s almost entirely negated in Ubuntu 18.04 Budgie. I say, “almost” because I did notice the occaisional sluggishness with applications opening even when the system was not under heavy load, however, it wasn’t bad enough to be a total deal breaker, and it wasn’t every app every time. I did notice it compared to other systems I’ve run, but again, not nearly as bad as previous Budgie attempts either.

Applications

Ubuntu Budgie as previously discussed comes in both a minimal and a normal installation, and with the minimal already discussed, I’ll just be discussing the normal installation.

Unfortunately, Ubuntu Budgie and I don’t agree on pretty much any of the default software choices, but everything the average user who doesn’t really have preferences, is included. Such examples of included software are:

• Chromium Web Browser
• Rythmbox
• GNOME MPV (video player)
• LibreOffice
• Caffeine
• GNOME Maps
• Geary Email

Personally, I uninstalled quite a few things and installed alternatives (Firefox for example) but all of the included software does its job well.

Installing new software via the included Software Manager is a breeze, and I was able to install Snaps of software like Spotify, as well as the obvious inclusion of the massive Ubuntu repositories.

Final Thoughts

I like this. I like this a lot. It’s exactly what I’d been hoping it would be, after the previous failures at a happy Budgie desktop. I haven’t used it for long enough to get as deep into messing with it as I probably will in the future, so maybe I’ll find issues at that time; but Ubuntu 18.04 Budgie is seeming to be a quite solid, attractive, and easy to use system for people who want even more eyecandy, or are sick of the usual environments.

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