Help test the 18.10 version of budgie-desktop on 18.04

Budgie Desktop
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As part of our commitment to LTS users we offer two versions of budgie-desktop.

  • the stable and supported 10.4 version of budgie-desktop. This will continue to receive stability fixes throughout the LTS period
  • the ability to upgrade to the next version of budgie-desktop now found in 18.10 which is packed full of new capabilities - but obviously less tested. This will be offered through our backports PPA.

The latter is where we need your help. We need testers to confirm that the 18.10 Ubuntu Budgie version of budgie-desktop works on 18.04.

Its very important to say - once you have finished testing you MUST purge the test PPA to return to the stable version of budgie. This test PPA will be eventually deleted and we don’t want to break your install!

Whilst v10.5 was not made official by the time of Cosmic Feature freeze, we have grabbed as much as we can to showcase the good work that has been made by Solus and the wider budgie development community.

From upstream’s blog, in no particular order look out for the following:

  • Raven Sound Output widget enables you to do global as well as per-app volume control and output device changing
  • Raven Sound Input widget enables you to do microphone control and input device changing.
  • Ability to mute / unmute applications and an option to allow raising volume above 100%
  • New Raven section in Budgie Desktop Settings. Under this new section, you’re able to show and hide individual widgets as well as enable the ability to raise your volume above 100% in Raven.
  • Ability to enable window focus change to being on mouse enter / leave via the “Windows” section of Budgie Desktop Settings, as opposed to click-to-focus.
  • The “Fonts” section of Budgie Desktop Settings introduces a new Text Scaling option
  • Ability to dismiss individual notifications
  • Notification grouping on an application basis
  • Large Notifications are now truncated to prevent huge notification windows being displayed
  • Caffeine powered - new applet that prevents screen dimming and lock screen triggering. This is now the default on the panel
  • You can now middle click on the Bluetooth applet to toggle Bluetooth airplane mode.
  • You can now middle click on the Sound applet to mute and unmute global audio.
  • We now hide the add workspace button in the Workspace Applet during initialization.
  • Icon Task List Grouping - displayed icons can optionally group the windows of the same application

In addition for this test PPA we have also restored the ability to update the login wallpaper when you change the user session wallpaper. We’ll be fixing this in 18.10 soon as well.

To help test please install our test backports PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntubudgie/test-backports

Then use Menu - Software Updater to update as normal. Logout and login

IMPORTANT: after testing all the features above, purge the test PPA - I’ll reiterate - this PPA will be eventually deleted and having this PPA still active will break your package manager.

sudo ppa-purge ppa:ubuntubudgie/test-backports

Confirm your test results here - I do need confirmation from multiple people that all is well. Without this I will not backport this version of budgie-desktop

1 Like
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I did a clean install of 18.04.1 in Virtualbox and updated and then added the test repository.

I only found one problem and that is with the caffeine applet:

  1. Tried t remove the caffeine applet via Budgie Desktop Settings and it was not remove. The only way to remove from the panel was to go into the Menu/Startup Applications and uncheck the box for caffeine.

  2. There is an inconsistency between what the Menu/Startup Applications shows vs Desktop Settings / Autostart vs .config/autostart desktop files.

  3. Turns out that there is no way to remove the caffeine applet from autostart. Removed the desktop file from .config/autostart, removed it from Menu/autostart and removed it form Desktop Settings / autostart. Then logged out and back in and it was again in all locations except .config/autostart.

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Appindicators are a pain - the only way to deal with this is to uninstall the caffeine package

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Ok, don’t recall that I had a problem with that on 18.10.

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I’m guessing you did a clean install? That did not have the caffeine package installed.

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Yes, a clean install of 18.10 on four machines. I don’t recall that it was a problem but will spin up a VM later to see.

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I have found no problems with the 18.10 version of budgie-desktop on 18.04.

1 Like
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I’ve been testing the 18.10 version of budgie-desktop on an 18.04 system with no issues.

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Hey @fossfreedom, no issues here on my test unit.

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@fossfreedom Checked all above points, found no issue. Thanks

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Many thanks folks for all of your help testing.

Since there are no significant issues I have copied the test package into backports.

This will appear as normal in your Software Updates - assuming here that you have ppa:ubuntubudgie/backports enabled.

Don’t forget to ppa_purge ppa:ubuntubudgie-testbackports to remove the testing PPA from your active source repositories.

Cheers